What do they teach them in school?

[SeaCat]

So we had a new employee start on my unit today. She is what is called a Nurse Extern, a second year Nursing Student hired to gain some experience on a unit. We get a lot of them and while they can be a pain in the butt for us because of scheduling problems it is good experience for them in the real world of Nursing. I have never minded working with them until today.

This one, we'll call her a nice generic name like Carla is in her third year of a B.S.N. program. When she showed up on the floor she was introduced to me and informed she would be orienting with me. She looked at me, sniffed and informed me she was here to learn to be a Nurse and not an Aide. OKay I shrugged that one off as I often deal with that attitude from Nursing Students as well as from younger R.N.'s.

Then the fun began.

I had her do the vital signs on three patients. When I looked over her vital signs, (done with a machine,) she became somewhat miffed at me. Who was I to check on her work? When I pointed out one patients Blood Pressure seemed a might high and asked her if she had double checked it manually she looked at me as though I was from a strange planet. (I am from a strange planet, it's called Earth.) That told me she hadn't. I went into the room and redid the Blood Pressure manually and found it to be much lower than the machine showed. (276/190 versus 168/72) She then told me she didn't trust my blood pressure as it had been done the old fashioned way.

I later found out she had not only complained to the Charge Nurse that I had double checked her Blood Pressure reading but also admitted that she couldn't do a manual Blood Pressure. (Say what?)

This afternoon we had to take several samples from different patients. Urine from a patient with a Catheter. Stool from two different patients, one with a Colostomy and one without and a Fluid Sample from a wound. The Student looked at me when I explained this and asked if she would actually have to do something like work with Stool and Urine. (Nope it hops right into the sample cups on it's own at your command.)

By the end of the day she was pissed off at me and disgusted with what we did on the unit. She was complaining quite loudly to the Charge Nurse that I had been unfair to her and that no one had explained that any of this would be expected of her.

Oh well, another Supervisor in training.

Cat

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

CAT

What you experienced is typical conduct & attitude. ON WHAT MEAT DOES CAESAR FEED THAT HE HAS GROWN SO GREAT? But she'll get run over by reality, and take her nurses degree with her to McDonalds.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Some people can swim through the sea of knowledge-- and emerge bone dry.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Or you can lead a child to knowledge but you can't make them learn.


Part of it is that we are forced to teach what some collection of know-it-all bureaucrats, politicians and university professors think will be good for them. Never mind whether it will be good for the kid!

 

[TE999]

Being both arrogant and stupid are not qualities I'd want in a nurse who's taking care of me. There are entirely too many fuckups in hospitals as it is without adding another one. If this bitch makes it thru nursing school, heaven help her patients...oh yeah, she'll prolly have Aides do her work and then criticize them.

 

[Handley_Page]

Oh well, another Supervisor in training.

Cat

Ask her if she has read anything about Florence Nightingale & Scutari Hospital.

Is that the same as a 'Manager' ?
We get loads of them over here.

 

[ishtat]

Am I alone in thinking it's a bit rough to sit in judgement on anyone after just one day?

OK she may have been a pain in the ass but I would be much more convinced by a judgment made after at least a couple of weeks of her learning the ropes.

 

[matriarch]

Am I alone in thinking it's a bit rough to sit in judgement on anyone after just one day?

OK she may have been a pain in the ass but I would be much more convinced by a judgment made after at least a couple of weeks of her learning the ropes.

But......but.......but........how the hell does someone get to be a second year nurse without knowing how to take blood pressure manually (machinery breaks down)? And what kind of moron thinks she can be a nurse and not have to deal with urine, stools and wound detritus? Huh?? Huh? She's in the wrong profession.

 

[ishtat]

But......but.......but........how the hell does someone get to be a second year nurse without knowing how to take blood pressure manually (machinery breaks down)? And what kind of moron thinks she can be a nurse and not have to deal with urine, stools and wound detritus? Huh?? Huh? She's in the wrong profession.

Bluntly Mat I think that anyone deserves better than to be rubbished and sneered at because they have cocked up on their first day. Maybe after a week or two that judgment will be fair but it strikes me that anyone who wants to write someone off after just one day needs to look at their own motivation.

I know that early in my working life I did some stupid things but was lucky enough to have people around me who pointed me in the right direction rather than ridiculed me.

All I am suggesting is give her a bit of tolerance and a lot of help for a week or two and then make a judgment . I don't think that's too much to ask and if things work out it's far more rewarding than sticking the knife in at the first opportunity.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ISHTAT

Healthcare isnt all about providing self-absorbed staff with crutches and hugs until they get over themselves. Overcoming mistakes and errors and personal problems is how we become experienced and mature, but the patient comes first.

Several years ago I had abdominal surgery and was tied to 2 IV drip bags. When the bags empty an alarm sounds in the room and at the nurses station.

My late night nurse had a relationship problem and spent a large portion of her shift on the phone with her honey. When my bag emptied and the alarm came on, it took her 20 minutes to get off the phone and change the bag. I timed it because the alarm was sounding, making sleep difficult. I complained to her about her response time, and she gave me some attitude about which of us was the nurse.

So I complained to my MD about it, and she was fired. But before she was fired other staff appealed to me to drop the complaint because the nurse was stressed from the relationship stuff and didnt need a performance problem on top of it.

I reminded them that my operation and care cost 25,000 Dollars, and the nurse needs to do her duty.

 

[cloudy]

Yes. All of us who dare work our asses off to get a college degree are morons.

 

[ishtat]

ISHTAT

Healthcare isnt all about providing self-absorbed staff with crutches and hugs until they get over themselves. Overcoming mistakes and errors and personal problems is how we become experienced and mature, but the patient comes first.

Several years ago I had abdominal surgery and was tied to 2 IV drip bags. When the bags empty an alarm sounds in the room and at the nurses station.

My late night nurse had a relationship problem and spent a large portion of her shift on the phone with her honey. When my bag emptied and the alarm came on, it took her 20 minutes to get off the phone and change the bag. I timed it because the alarm was sounding, making sleep difficult. I complained to her about her response time, and she gave me some attitude about which of us was the nurse.

So I complained to my MD about it, and she was fired. But before she was fired other staff appealed to me to drop the complaint because the nurse was stressed from the relationship stuff and didnt need a performance problem on top of it.

I reminded them that my operation and care cost 25,000 Dollars, and the nurse needs to do her duty.

All that 'story' proves James, is that quite clearly, your surgeons did not remove an asshole.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ISHTAT

She was a bum and had no business caring for patients. Patients are at her mercy, and she doesnt give a crap about them.

 

[TE999]

But......but.......but........how the hell does someone get to be a second year nurse without knowing how to take blood pressure manually (machinery breaks down)? And what kind of moron thinks she can be a nurse and not have to deal with urine, stools and wound detritus? Huh?? Huh? She's in the wrong profession.

Word up, Mat. This woman's in the wrong business...and one day someone (or several someone's) are going to pay dearly for it. In the field of medicine, one does not learn by doing.

 

[JagFarlane]

But......but.......but........how the hell does someone get to be a second year nurse without knowing how to take blood pressure manually (machinery breaks down)? And what kind of moron thinks she can be a nurse and not have to deal with urine, stools and wound detritus? Huh?? Huh? She's in the wrong profession.

I know...I mean hell most Navy Corpsmen I ran across couldn't tell their head from their ass but at least when it came to being able to do the basics, like take a manual blood pressure, they know what they were doing.

 

[LindySez]

She's been watching House too much.

Have her read Call The Midwife
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Call-Midwife-Jennifer-Worth/dp/1872560105

Its a book written by a woman who was a midwife in Londons East End in the 1950's.

I'm rather young as 'knowing how the world works' goess, so I think I know what her reaction would be once she read this book. It goes into a bit of detail about midwifery and how it was looked down appon before the turn of the century, and how it was not viewed as an actual science. There was no funding for it from the government, no recognition from politicians, it was viewed as a scandal to take work away from doctors.

50 years later, when the author is a fully trained midwife, she makes several comments about the advances of science, medical practices, and the over-all outlook on midwifery and why it was increasingly important - expecially in Londond's east end after the wars.
The author used phrases like "this wasnt the dark ages" and "some people were unable to accept that midwifing wasnt mechanical, it was about experience and knowledge". Several times in the book she tells off her school proffessors who were very 'by the book' instead of 'by experience' and how it hasn't prepared her for the field of midwifery.


Once this new girl you have to take under your wing, notices that 60 years ago people were making the same revolations that she is, maybe she'll realize that sometimes you need to listen to someone who knows what they're doing - no matter what they teach you in school.

 

[jomar]

A couple of things come to mind...

CAT
Expectations, meet reality.

JBJ
In my business people tell tales of woe why they can't pay their bill. My response (after several letters offering to set up a minimal monthly payment plan and just before sending them to collections) is, "I got problems too."

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JOMAR

My youngest daughter manages the office for a group of debt collection lawyers.

When she gets the tales of woe she jumps in with her story about her husband losing his 100K job to India and his 5 rental properties that were foreclosed on.

 

[R. Richard]

One of the things that they teach a lot in schools is that, "Education makes you a King/Queen."

If you have a college degree [I do] you're superior to any lowlife scum who doesn't have the 'college edge.' I learned, on the way up, that there are people who have learned more in their specialty than any just graduated college edge.

If you have a Masters, you are even more Noble than just a plain college edge. That includes the plain college edge who worked his butt off all night to learn how the new system actually works, no the crap in the manual. Of course, when the humble college edge leaves and you can't get the new system to work, at least you have the Masters to fall back on.

If you have it Piled Higher and Deeper, you can walk on water and your shit doesn't stink. Best of all, when you do it your way and it doesn't work, management drys your tears and then lays off the lowly bastards who followed your directions.

Been there and had that done to me.

 

[mythtrav16]

Bluntly Mat I think that anyone deserves better than to be rubbished and sneered at because they have cocked up on their first day. Maybe after a week or two that judgment will be fair but it strikes me that anyone who wants to write someone off after just one day needs to look at their own motivation.

I know that early in my working life I did some stupid things but was lucky enough to have people around me who pointed me in the right direction rather than ridiculed me.

All I am suggesting is give her a bit of tolerance and a lot of help for a week or two and then make a judgment . I don't think that's too much to ask and if things work out it's far more rewarding than sticking the knife in at the first opportunity.

I agree. She is only human and she will make mistakes, and yes, it may very well suck when that happens. But the same can be said of anyone, including those who belittle her. It saddens me to see how intollerant people can be some times. It begets nothing but bitterness, arrogance and increasing staff shortages in vocations that declare many of the willing "not good enough" to join.

ISHTAT

She was a bum and had no business caring for patients. Patients are at her mercy, and she doesnt give a crap about them.

Maybe there's a reason for that. She came in on a very defensive tack, that's not the way people usually introduce themselves to a new environment, so it suggests that she is used to not getting any respect and feels she needs to demand it. I don't know this woman, but it sounds like she by-and-large may not be treated very generously.

Harsh as it may sound, the soul is a place of business, and if no goodness being received, it makes it very hard for one to pay it forward. Perhaps this woman tried to be a good person by picking a career that helps people, but ultimately didn't have the spirit for it.

That being said, I do agree that a person whose job it is to help the most incapacitated of society does need to be caring about their patients.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Nursing care isnt about nurses...she gets paid for what she does. And if she needs TLC bad enough, she needs to be a patient or see a shrink.

 

[Austin8]

Instead of asking for a stool sample, she should be asking, "would you like fries with that shake?"

 

[john-the-author]

Bluntly Mat I think that anyone deserves better than to be rubbished and sneered at because they have cocked up on their first day. Maybe after a week or two that judgment will be fair but it strikes me that anyone who wants to write someone off after just one day needs to look at their own motivation.

I know that early in my working life I did some stupid things but was lucky enough to have people around me who pointed me in the right direction rather than ridiculed me.

All I am suggesting is give her a bit of tolerance and a lot of help for a week or two and then make a judgment . I don't think that's too much to ask and if things work out it's far more rewarding than sticking the knife in at the first opportunity.

I don't think she should be written up by SeaCat for her first day: she could very easily be dealing with an attitude fostered by her particular education on this path and the amount of 'getting your hands dirty' (which is what 90% of nursing seems to be about, IMO) was truly minimized by her teachers. We'd be able to see in a couple of weeks if she'd make the cut and have reality sink in. Mebbe yes, mebbe no.

But I also think that her shitty attitude isn't to be tolerated, fostered, coddled, or otherwise put up with. There's no reason to be impolite or personal about this, but she does need to be hit upside the head very hard with the reality stick immediately. This is nursing she's choosing to do and if she has a baseline problem with that, then it's her problem and she has to deal with it quietly and on her own time.

 

[cloudy]

One of the things that they teach a lot in schools is that, "Education makes you a King/Queen."

If you have a college degree [I do] you're superior to any lowlife scum who doesn't have the 'college edge.' I learned, on the way up, that there are people who have learned more in their specialty than any just graduated college edge.

If you have a Masters, you are even more Noble than just a plain college edge. That includes the plain college edge who worked his butt off all night to learn how the new system actually works, no the crap in the manual. Of course, when the humble college edge leaves and you can't get the new system to work, at least you have the Masters to fall back on.

If you have it Piled Higher and Deeper, you can walk on water and your shit doesn't stink. Best of all, when you do it your way and it doesn't work, management drys your tears and then lays off the lowly bastards who followed your directions.

Been there and had that done to me.

Complete bullshit, but then...I expect as much from you.

I expected a little more empathy from the rest of you. I think we've all had horrible first days at a new job. Bad attitude or not, she's young, and it was her first day. It isn't really even a "job" for her, since she's a second year student, and is there to learn.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Complete bullshit, but then...I expect as much from you.

I expected a little more empathy from the rest of you. I think we've all had horrible first days at a new job. Bad attitude or not, she's young, and it was her first day.

So sez the wild thang who chases cars in the road.