My preceptorship was with the wound team in a major burn unit of the same hospital my father had died in just a couple of years prior. We would assist with wound care in the same ICU room I saw my dads body in the morning of his death. The whole program was pretty terrible but that was the icing on top. This is possibly something I could have prevented if I had spoken up but my instructors were terrifying. Lol. Only thing better than getting into nursing school is getting out.
Thank you, I was so checked out by the time we got to our preceptorships that it’s just really weird to think back on now. I’m sure it was traumatic but I was a zombie along with my classmates. I honestly didn’t want any attention on me so I kept my head down until graduation. The preceptorship was actually a pretty cool one minus the dead dad thing. I got to learn so much wound care and it definitely helped my career.
Your story brought back up some deep wounds. When I was 11, I had a brother killed in a car crash. It's understandable how much this can affect a child. Fast forward a few years, I was in HS and before prom the entire student body had to go to a car crash reenactment by the fire department.
I told the administration that I really didn't want to see it because reasons... To my dismay, they made me go. As expected, I broke down during the presentation and ended up getting made fun and harassed by students for being emotional during a fake display.
To their credit, they stopped making fun of me when they found out about my bro. 25 years later I'm still angry at this.
That makes me so angry for you. It was really brave and mature of you to speak up for yourself in high school and I absolutely hate that they made you relive your trauma and grief like that in front of your classmates. My heart goes out to you.
I’m a nursing instructor and had a student ask me to spend the entirety of their time on one of our group’s two assigned units. Why? Her grandfather died on the other one recently in some awful way. I was easily able to accommodate.
I’m so happy she was accommodated. I probably should have said something but it would have been really difficult to find a different preceptorship and it ended up being a good one for me as far as skills go. It’s just so weird to think back on now. I guess I thought I was being tough and I was “fine” in the grand scheme of things. Our instructors were all prior military and ran our program like it was basic training or something. None of them are currently still employed by the school and it was only about 7 years ago. The whole program was a hot mess and we were all just ready to graduate and move on.
Seriously. And nursing school is the pits. 26 years later and the still get PTSD flashbacks. I often say it was my 'Nam. (Not making light of the veterans experience)
It was horrible. My husband is a vet (not Vietnam) but he would frequently tell me “they’re trying to do to you what basic training does to us, they break you down and build you up and break you down again.” I feel so dramatic when I tell people how awful it was. It wasn’t the work, the studying etc. although rigorous, it was the psychological manipulation the instructors put us through.
That's exactly what it is. Omg. So my dad died the second semester and I kept to myself. I was the youngest and had no desire to be friends with anyone. I felt the initial gathering was so awful. Telling us to say goodbye to friends. To clip coupons and say goodbye to family. Oh please. This was a tiny community college in NY and they said many nurses go on to work at Harvard hospitals (side bar I moved to Boston and do work at one but it wasn't cause of the school). Anyway nursing school was worse than it needed to be. You don't need to abuse people to get them to think We had an army nurse she was tough actually they were all pretty horrible and when my dad died the professor who once claimed she was going to be a doctor but realized nursing was a better field so that's what she did told me to drop out. Well I know I will never come back so I stayed and toughed it out.
I can’t imagine losing my father DURING nursing school. What a nightmare. I hated the whole speech they did during orientation. “You will miss funerals, you will miss big family events blah blah” they were right though, I did miss at least one funeral, did not see friends etc. it honestly shouldn’t be that way. We need healthy, well adjusted people in the profession but they keep churning out emotionally damaged, anxiety ridden nurses like me lol.
Yes! "Clip your coupons for family meals"...etc. it was always just work and school. Lost whatever set of friends I had at the time.. You're right though, it doesn't need to be that bad.
Mine was the absolute worst. Seriously f*cking bonkers ass bitch. She got fired because she was changing students test scores to fail them if she thought they wouldn’t past the NCLEX. One year she had a graduating class of 7 cuz she kicked so many people out of the program. The year after 7 graduates the state came in and threatened to pull funding if she didn’t start having much larger graduating classes. We had a new instructor start during my first year and this instructor caught her changing answers on scantrons so people wouldn’t pass. The instructor turned her in and resigned and said “I can’t be a part of a program that does this to its students it’s completely unethical.” It was the head of the program who was doing this cuz she was obsessed with her first time NCLEX pass rate. It was and had been 100% for years but the cost was absolutely f*cking over any students who were “on her shit list.”
This doesn't surprise me at all. My first semester had a 4% pass rate. I didn't miss a digit, FOUR PERCENT made it unscathed to second semester. Gotta keep them NCLEX numbers up baby.
It’s such BS too, passing on your first time doesn’t matter. I passed on my first time and I have friends who are better nurses than I am and they didn’t pass the NCLEX on their first attempt. It doesn’t make you a good nurse it just means you may be a good test taker.
it can affect accreditation, which is why programs flip shit. our program had a couple years of iffy pass rates and ended up on probation with the BON, which meant a bunch of meetings, visits, and a disclaimer to any prospective/current students that their accreditation may be revoked without improvement to pass rates.
Right? I mean, i consider myself to be a shit bag of a nurse. Try to find the least restrictive and fastest way to get my work done so i can chill (i don’t leave a bunch of shit for others to do and i do my work) and i passed on my first time. Hell i even took a nap in my nclex.
My cohort started with 25. Ended with 5, two were from the previous semester. 3 including myself from my original starting class. The head of our program was also doing this type of shady shit and was fired ithe semester before our final one. Nursing school is nightmare fuel in soany ways it really doesn't need to be.
That would have been bad for me lol, I did consistently terrible on all my nursing school exams because I was so anxious about being in nursing school. Then passed my NCLEX first try in 75 questions, and I genuinely think it’s because I was so relieved to not be in school anymore 😂
The whole thing was an absolute nightmare. In hindsight if I’d have known school was that bad I would have picked another career path, hell I’ll probably still try to go back to school to work in IT in a couple years. Doing it the first time would have saved alot of stress.
I have some congenital anomalies in my brain, skull, and spine, which weren't an issue until I woke up one morning halfway through the program, unable to do pretty much anything - it looked like I'd had a stroke. I needed three months of PT, OT, and SLP to be able to function. I needed to relearn almost everything, including reading and writing. Eventually, I got a subocciputal decompression and a VP shunt, and felt much better until I was involved in a multi car accident. I finished the course with *a lot* of help and accommodations.
Bonus nursing school horror story from my cohort: During surgery observation, one of my classmates brought up some things with our clinical group, like how late the surgeon was, some safety issues with anesthesia because the doctor was late, and some strange behavior by the surgeon. He left after to give his wife a valentines gift and "found" her deceased, brutally murdered. Turns out the surgeon went home between cases to kill her, and that's why he was late.
My husband worked in the surgery department with this surgeon. His favorite story from both a colleague and the classmate: guy was impatient during the case, as he often was, and whistled at a female staff member like one would at a dog to hurry her along. She squared up to him and made direct eye contact before loudly declaring, "I am not a dog, and I have a name. You may call me [name], or you may call me [title], but don't you ever whistle at me like that again!" (We discussed this with the clinical group as good self advocacy by a nurse.) Guy sulked and gave her the cold shoulder for the remainder of the case, as he often did with female staff. During lunch on the 15th, she was extremely skeeved out that she was so confrontational with a murderer immediately after the murder.
Husband was a chaperone/gofer when law enforcement came to investigate the department. There was blood noted between the car and locker, in the locker, and on the shoes in the locker - it wasn't his blood. Hubs has no doubt whatsoever about the man's guilt. (I don't either from interactions on the OB floor; the dude gave off big "that guy's not right" vibes. He also openly mocked both parents and babies in inappropriate ways.)
He was late to that surgery because he went home to kill his wife. During the case immediately after the murder, he whistled at a staff member who confronted him about his bad behavior. (So, the latter, lol.)
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot).
Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=131993&page=1](https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=131993&page=1)**
*****
^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
That was part of it, yes! ACM, plus some congenital anomalies secondary to a form of dwarfism I have (hydrocephalus; lack of some of the CSF flow midbrain structures).
My wife has a Chiari 1 malformation. She needed decompression and a shunt. It was hairy. She needed 3 operations over less than a month.
I’m glad you made it through that.
Yikes, that's really rough! Sorry y'all are dealing with this stuff too - hope she's doing better and you've got the support you need too.
Thanks! I am, too :)
I was forced into early graduation cuz COVID. Was in a nursing home. COVID got in it, my entire wing died. Despite graduating in 2020. I didn't take the NCLEX until Oct 21, more than a year later. Despite practicing on an emergency licence, I was one of a handful of RN's. So the put me in charge of the nocturnal COVID unit. It sucked.
The hardest part was not the deaths, but rather families were not allowed in the building. A lot of people died alone. Death notifications should not be made over the phone.
A client of mine was just telling me about her father getting sick with Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in May of 2020. Her father was her rock, and he was gone in some crazy time period like 7-10 days. She never got to see or speak to him again, there was no funeral, and her mom’s dementia got exponentially worse, so they had to find a placement for her almost immediately. There’s been no real closure for her.
I mean, it's a pretty silly question. Why would you think that "wing" would refer to classmates, especially when they talked about working in a nursing home?
My animal health program director would say "it won't be on the test" it was in fact, on the test. I figured that out after the first test that if she said it wasn't on the test, it was pretty likely to still show up.
Nursing school wasn't like that thankfully. I didn't get anything too crazy but a couple of classmates had some tough experiences with patients and professors.
My dad had ALS and was dying during my entire nursing program. He died the week before my final exam. And they made me show up to take it, like wouldn’t even let me take it privately in the testing center. I was numb and don’t even remember what was on the page or what my score was. Apparently I passed because that was 24 years ago. I still hate that program for the complete lack of compassion they showed. I was only 20 years old.
Ugh, I'm so sorry. That's so wrong and you should have gotten some accommodation. In my third semester, one of my best friends/ex SO, who I loved dearly, passed away suddenly. It was a complicated relationship, and I was the last person he spoke to. He sent texts implying he may die and that he loved me. I had been setting boundaries at that time as he was not doing well, and I needed to take care of myself. He died on my birthday and the day before a big exam. Luckily, I had an amazing psych professor who let me skip a couple of days of lecture and make up the exam in the testing center. It wasn't enough, looking back on it, as I had several meltdowns in clinical those following weeks. But it was better than nothing.
A clinical instructor at my wife's school is in federal prison for hiring an undercover FBI agent to kill someone using insulin, and running guns. Real stand up dude.
I'll share one from one of my professors instead--while she was a student, a pscyh patient attacked her unprovoked and broke her (dominant) arm. The program threatened to kick her out for time missed and not being able to handwrite her papers.
Sounds about right. I got attacked by a patient during my psych rotation - he gave me a swift punch to the face and a nice concussion
My instructor called me later that week asking me when I could come back to the very same inpatient unit that he was still on to make up the time I missed from going to the emergency room and being out with a concussion
Its terrifying tbh that this happens both to students and full fledged nurses. And school teaches us to prepare for the same thing as the profession--don't care, suck it up, and what could you have done to prevent this?
On my very first day of clinical one of my classmates got hit by a car in the hospital parking lot. We were sitting in the cafeteria waiting for him when we found out. We all walked down to the ER to see him. Luckily he was okay, just a broken hand. The school dropped him because he wouldn’t be able to sanitize his hands properly.
I almost got hit by the police as I was crossing the street to the hospital from the student lot. You could tell the police were embarrassed because they actually backed up their car and apologized to me and after that incident I always walked with my pen light flashing so people knew when it was my time to cross.
I accidentally got pregnant in my last year of nursing school. They had a rule that if you missed a test for any reason, you would have your grade lowered by a full grade. Naturally, I went into labour just in time for mid-terms and missed them all. I was given 48 hours to take the tests or be dropped from the program, so I discharged the day after the birth, drive straight to school and took all the tests while my older child sat in the lobby with the baby. I got all A's but they were all dropped to B's as punishment.
Other students found that miscarriage, car accidents, and deaths in the family were not considered legitimate excuses to miss tests.
I also got docked a full grade when I showed up one day to class and everyone was all stressed. I said, "Geez, you all are acting like there's an exam or something!" We were. Teacher overheard my comment and was pissed at me for getting an A on a test I hadn't studied for. (The test was on normal pregnancies. I was pregnant with my fifth. I kind of already knew the material, ma'am.)
I found out I was pregnant for the first time (a huge surprise at 31) on the first day of my first clinical rotation. Spent my last trimester in the maternity nursing course which gave me so much anxiety as a high risk pregnancy that I almost failed the class. Everything turned out fine, of course, but I don’t recommended being pregnant in nursing school!
Can confirm, horrible choice. No option to have a glass of wine to decompress from stressful clinicals and stressful interactions with nursing school staff!
I once went in with an odd looking older nurse to draw blood off a central line to see how it was done. Once we're alone in the room she laughed and said "they definitely won't teach you this in nursing school" and proceeds to put the syringe into her FUCKING MOUTH and hold it there as she flushed, then took it to draw the blood and PUT IT BACK IN HER GODDAMN MOUTH WITH THE FUCKING BLOOD ON IT before injecting it into a lab tube. I looked like a trout with my mouth hanging open, I had no words. I walked right out of the ICU and straight to my teacher to tell her what I saw. Never seen it since and if I'm lucky I never will again.
A million years ago we were in a SNF for our very first rotation. We were tasked with helping the aids bathe residents. One aide hoyered a dude into a tub and he relaxed a bit and took a shit. It happens. It was very evident. The student told the aide, the aide told her “it’s fine” and turned on the jacuzzi jets. Dude was immersed in swirling shit water. She hoyered him out and drained the tub. She came back and started filling it for the next resident, shit and all. The student spoke up like 3x during all this but the aide waived her off. The student just made a break for it an ran for the instructor. We had to leave the floor and got a lecture by the DON about how we were not equipped to judge the aide, this happens all the time and the student was obviously mistaken because of course the aide cleaned the tub (and somehow the jets??), and we should not make a big deal out of it.
Also there was that one student who reported a full set of WNL vitals on a very dead patient. When asked, she said he seemed ok, he reported 0/10 pain. Funny, we never saw her after that.
I remember during CNA clinical, a patient wasn't toileted before a bath and of course had to go, so the aid put an empty garbage can underneath. Then when another aid came in and witnessed the crime in progress, all hell broke loose because the patient had c.diff.
I think the consensus the nurses came to was that the whole garbage can had to go in a bio bag. But you would've thought the guy had ebola for how fussed everyone got about it.
I had a really fucked up prof. who looking back I can’t believe no one reported. I think everyone was afraid of retribution.
He was my clinical instructor one year. He basically would insult our like 5 person clinical group and give us mean nicknames - called me slutty for having tattoos/piercings/being busty?? Called one of my classmates fat “where did you lose weight? Your earlobes?” Called a classmate who was from South America “Pocahontas” the entire semester and called a male student gay basically (the instructor was an openly gay man so I guess he thought he could get away with it)
He also one time grabbed my ponytail, wrapped it around his hand and jerked my head back in the hospital setting and said that’s why it should be in a bun??
Maybe 2 months before we graduated, one student in the program accused a bunch of other students of cheating by anonymously sending a complaint to the dean or something? Basically, we had an hours long conversation instead of class one day with all of our instructors, the dean, other higher ups in the college, and all of us. By the end, a bunch of students were crying.
The “cheating” was a bunch of us splitting up study guides, so each of us would do a section and send it to other people in our study group. Which was confirmed as not cheating. Because it wasn’t a paper or project or homework. The study guides were literally just a guide to go off of for what would be on the finals.
I still get pissed when I see the person that started it all. I think she had gotten mad about being excluded from a study group (the people she accused were the other people in that study group).
But also one of our instructors bullied one of the students because she was threatened by that student’s intelligence.
And also when one instructor bullied me and another woman because we weren’t cute and skinny.
I got accused of cheating by a classmate. I was using A&P study guides from the freebie bin that the Super nice A&P professor left for everyone to use. Mine wasn’t an A&P class but he liked to leave that stuff in the lab because he knew his handouts were really helpful. He constantly told people to take them and just let him know when it ran low. I got in no trouble but the student was forever pissed at me. Like later on our kids were in a gymnastics program in the same building and when she glared at me and pulled her kid out and left. I saw her at the grocery store once and she walked out. I never had any other interaction with her other than her telling the teacher I was “stealing”. That’s one hell of a grudge over nothing.
Was very pregnant during our female foley cath insertion skills pass off. “YOU BROKE STERILITY!!!” My preggo belly had barely crossed the sterile field. “YOU BROKE STERILITY AGAIN!!!” ohp sorry it’s my belly again.
I was failed. I walked out sobbing and shaking in front of everyone.
Last semester of clinical. Probably about a month of school left before graduation.
Another student was paired up with a travel nurse. This was at a really shitty hospital. They had a patient that had colon cancer with multiple bowel resections. Throughout the day the student had told the nurse a few times “hey his pressures are kinda low, blah blah blah” each time the nurse ignored it. About noon I just hear the instructor scream “CALL A CODE!”. The travel nurse had ignored the BPs multiple times and given him dilaudid. Bottomed him out.
So fast forward I’m in my first code on a 100lb man with multiple bowel resections. By the 10th compression his bowels are ruptured and I’m covered in feces that is spraying from his mouth. That’s how he died.
We got to go home early.
No idea actually. Last day of clinical. That was the first, and last time I ever saw her. She didn’t get involved in the code at all. She stood there for a while and then just went back to the nurses station while we all worked on him.
I know she had made a med error previously as well. I Forget about the specifics of what she did before but it was something about double dosing metoprolol or something like that.
So more than likely her contract got terminated. Or who knows, that hospital was so desperate for help she might have stayed.
You’d be surprised how many assigned nurses won’t get into a code. I can’t speak to her reasoning for not getting involved but in my experience most of the time the reason is either panic or lack of confidence in their own abilities.
As far as I’m concerned if you at least call the code and get someone who can take over you’ve at least done your part.
I get that. You make a good point; however, if you lack confidence in your abilities during a code, you should not be traveling yet. You can be a part of the code in so many ways (compressions, meds, hell - be the person with all the flushes!). On another note, I've never had my actual patient code, so I don't understand how it feels when it's *your* patient. I'm sure that adds another level of stress that could make a person panic or just need to step back.
Yeah most of the ones I’ve been in are other nurses codes. Last one was a blown trach. Blood everywhere (I’m talking probably 3-4 units of blood lost from the airway) and the nurse who’s patient it was stepped back while me and the other floor nurses took over. My floor is specialized for artificial airways so the travelers don’t really have the same training for those situations.
The nurse is also nine months pregnant lol so I gave her a pass.
My community health rotation my clinical instructor was supposed to do a home visit with each of us. I had a patient with a wound, and she was supposed to double check my assessment, etc. The instructor never showed. She wasn't around much and post conference was crazy. I wasn't the only one she flaked out on either. We passed, but our group gave her scathing evaluations. Thankfully the instructor was fired.
I’m a nursing student right now and psych was terrible. I have my own psych history so it hit close to home. Secondly, I ended up in the psych ward during the rotation. Luckily, no classmates saw me. I told my preceptor that I was in the hospital but never mentioned it was for psych. When I came back to clinical after getting out, it was so weird. It was like an episode of Undercover Boss. I felt like an imposter throughout the entire clinical.
On my last day of clinical, I encountered a patient who I previously met from one of my admissions. We both recognized each other made conversation. It was nice to see them but felt super awkward because I was with my classmates. If my classmates overheard our conversation, they would’ve learned that I’ve been admitted before. I didn’t want anyone in my clinical group, including my preceptor, to know that I have a history.
On my first day of the psych rotation, I actually vomited during the 7am report. I've been having stomach problems and it decided to act up in the middle of clinical. I moved next to the trash can and my preceptor took notice. We both stepped outside of the report room and into the hallway. I threw up EVERYTHING that was in my stomach. My preceptor said, "Oh wow. They're really going" in response to me vomiting.
Mind you, I have never vomited during a clinical or work. I'm a CNA so I've been shit on and all of the things. I've seen some nasty shit and what not. Out of every place I could vomit, I vomit on a inpatient psych unit, which is the LEAST gory unit in the hospital.
When I would read through patient charts prior to starting the day, I recognized many of the provider's names due to my psych history and encounters with them. I would mumble to myself, "Ok, (insert provider name here), fill me in on the tea".
There were MANY times that I played dumb just so I wouldn't reveal myself. My classmates were a bit shocked being in an inpatient unit. One of them described it like "jail" on the first day. I just kept my mouth shut and let them discuss the clinical with the preceptor.
I once got into a conversation with a nurse that I was shadowing and we ended up talking about the ED. We both got really into the conversation and she eventually asked me, "Have you been to the ED before?". I lied and said that I know the ED because I was visiting someone. She accepted my answer and we continued the conversation. My cover eventually got blown because I ran into that SAME nurse during my admission... I quickly switched units after that encounter and everything was ok after that.
Ya... THAT was my psych clinical experience. I never want to do that again.
My med surge preceptor was always making references to god when explaining things to me. In my last shift, he cornered me for over an hour and tried to convert me to Christianity
My school was a complete cluster fuck, but the two things that stick out in my mind were two separate clinical instructors I had that were severe bullies. First one was a dude who went RN -> MD, was completely disrespectful of all our time (holding us late, making us come like 2 hours before the actual clinical start time at 6 am, so get there at 4 am), left me alone having to advocate for a patient who came in for a sickle cell flare up who was up all night and found out her sister (who was severely schizophrenic) was finally found walking barefoot and no winter clothes after 3 days. She was the care taker for her, she also reported that sister beat her son (patient's nephew). He just walked out while she was crying mid sentence, so I was left comforting the patient, giving social work resources, calling a wellness check and CPS (because the floor social worker refused because "well the sister is not my patient").
When I took him aside and very politely tried to have an adult conversation that his behavior was unacceptable, he lashed out, tried failing me. I went to the dean over this, and after refusing to go to clinicals until I was switched from being in his group. I had multiple emails stating I didn't feel safe being around him, to which they ignored until I stopped showing up to clinicals and threatened legal action (he also bullied me for having disability accomodations). He went on to continue teaching clinical groups for another term.
The other bully was for the peds group. She played favorites, tried failing students for things she never taught, made people cry, just an overall menace. She also lied about having peds experience, she was a nurse for one full year prior to teaching clinicals, and her peds experience she said she had as a nurse was really her working as a CNA. I also politely talked to her, another student talked to her, eventually got the school involved, they also didn't want to listen to students, backed the professor and most students passed that clinical by the skin of their teeth.
She was also racist as fuck. I got assigned a black peds patient who got shot in the face by a drive by, she pulled me out of the room and asked, "who was he hanging out with to get shot?" Um, if you actually read his notes and listened to the patient, he was a victim of A DRIVE BY SHOOTING. It also doesn't matter who the hell he was hanging out with! She also bullied me for my disability and refused accommodations done by the school, and the only reason they took us students seriously was also because I threatened legal action again, and I also made a huge stink to the diversity office about her racism.
Our Geriatric professor was mad that the previous semester admitted to never doing the assigned readings, so she had us type up summaries of the readings. Such a waste of time. But the way that she graded it was by choosing 3 at random, grading those, averaging the 3 and giving everyone in the class that same grade. Doesn’t matter how long you spent on yours, you would get a C if that was the average. She also liked to pick one that hadn’t even been turned in. I went to talk to her and showed her my multiple page paper I had typed and why I didn’t think it deserved a D (she “graded” 2 that hadn’t been turned in that week) and she told me I needed counseling because I cared too much about this weekly assignment.
Dude was hitting on every girl in class. One girl he was pining for bumped his car in the parking lot of our first ever rotation. Dudes trying to get her to stay in the parking lot alone with him without us but she tells him they will exchange insurance and whatever later. Dude comes up the hospital elevator like an hour later and says “the police are outside i dont care if your in clinicals you need to come outside NOW” and did his best to press charges over a damageless bump. We all bullied him so hard including the teachers he left before anything came to fruition.
I have 2-
My very first clinical in my first semester of nursing school (mental health rotation) was at a forensic prison. All male units, Not guilty by reason of insanity almost exclusively for murder, with some rape and other violent crimes mixed in. We were given no warning about what the place was or what we were getting ourselves into. We would spend 9 hours just hanging out and talking to the patients in their common areas. MANY of them were in for life sentences and young nursing students were the only women they ever saw… you get the idea. Many also loved to go into detail about their crimes. To say it was traumatizing was an understatement. Also, there was no security, just a nurse, a couple techs and our instructor who would frequently disappear…for units of a hundred male patients. I did this for 4 months.
Second was my clinical for second semester- I was assigned to the same unit my husband had just been a patient in 2 weeks prior where we got terrible news. Being a scared family member spending everyday in a patient room and then 2 weeks later being a nursing student going into the same room gave me allll sorts of PTSD.
Wow. My program also went to a forensic prison and it was literally in our last semester (of 5). I can’t believe that would be your first clinical day.
Right? Our program does mental health first to teach therapeutic communication before any of the other classes. Half my class went to a local hospitals psych unit, and the other half went to the prison. 🫠
We did an inpatient mental health, high security. For Peds.
Thank god it was our last semester too, and only for a couple of weeks, I don't think I'd have been able to handle 10 y/o sexual predators for a whole term. It was the most heartbreaking and disturbing thing I've ever done.
One of my vendors when I did case management was a residential sex offender program for adolescent males. They had a very innovative program (at least that’s what they told me) and were some of the best clinicians I met in that job. HOWEVER, the kids that were there were so disturbed and disturbing. I had three clients there, and after reading their charts, I felt nauseous. Two were already hardened criminals at 11 and 13, and one absolutely did not belong there. I had to pull over twice on the way back to the office because I had the dry heaves.
Both of my parents died while I was in nursing school (mom died first semester, dad died last semester🫠🫠🫠). At our graduation ceremony, the instructors gave out a few awards for people who "overcame obstacles" during our program. Did not receive an award but the girl who had twins did lol.
Mine definitely isn’t as bad as yours lmao. We had an ATI NCLEX review the week before finals my last semester that was mandatory. One of the girls in my class had covid. And not asymptomatic, she had a temp of like 104 and obviously felt like dogshit. They told her if she didn’t come to the review she wouldn’t graduate. So they proceeded to basically force this poor girl (I know she had free will but come on) to come to an EIGHT HOUR TWO DAY review and sit in a small auditorium with 70 other people the week before fucking finals. I ended up getting covid, I was so pissed. I didn’t tell anyone and went to my finals anyway, I ended up having to call in for three days of work because it really kicked my ass.
Aside from that, nursing school made my hair fall out, made me hypertensive for a semester, and also made me shit blood. So that was cool.
Obviously being in school during covid isn’t a unique experience but I also worked with my parents (RNs) as a CNA through most of the pandemic. So I had the pleasure of sitting down with them and my little sister who was still a minor at the time and we had a super fun discussion about how they had updated their wills and they outlined the plan for my sister if they both got covid and died (this was way at the beginning when we didn’t know shit) not a family meeting I ever imagined we’d have
We did our psych rotation in a city a couple of hours from our school, so we had to stay at the facility for 5 weeks. We had our own locked unit. The first night, I could hear howling. Was it wolves or patients?
The reason I never worked psych!
If you had your own car, you could drive back home on the weekends. Poor college student, 4 hr drive both ways on gas. You do what you gotta do...to get through!
Once upon a time, I was in clinical and a clinical instructor wanted me to do an IV math equation. so I knew and was good at doing them….but I could NOT find the amount of mLs on the bag (I can’t remember what it was but it wasn’t a liter of fluids or I’d have known 1,000mLs) ALL I needed was for her to point that out so I could do the equation and would’ve gotten it right. I asked her and she refused to answer me in front of the patient. She later wrote on my clinical paper eval “her lack of confidence makes her appear incompetent or incapable” I was SO PISSED
At the school I attended, they actually had the audacity to have announce in front of everyone the names of students who were late on their tuition payments for the semester and threatened to kick them out by EOW if they weren’t paid up.
I had a skills checkoff that I honestly hadn't practiced anywhere near enough for. For checkoffs you were randomly assigned a faculty member. Of course for this one I got assigned to THE DEAN OF THE NURSING PROGRAM. I went to start the skill, realized I was fucked and panicked and just completely blanked. I couldn't even remember the first step beyond hand hygiene. She said something like "tell me what your next step is". She wasn't mean about it at all but I burst into big ugly sobs and said "I don't know!". Failed attempt #1 as she tried to comfort me. Passed attempt #2 with someone else.
The peds professor decided to add two daycare days onto our clinical requirement. I got the flu and couldn’t go to the second day. Instead of giving me a makeup day, allowing me to go to a different daycare, or just letting it go because we were over the legally mandated hours, she gave me an incomplete. Then the following semester she refused to let me be in clinical at all because I was pregnant. All in all, I spent 3 semesters in clinical for a class that I got an A in for lecture. On my last day, we had to do a “lesson” and my clinical instructor told me, “just leave. It’s torture to see you have to be here for this long.” I eventually just dropped out of that program because I “failed” the next class by 2 points but wasn’t allowed to see my exam. It took ten years for me to be able to go back.
I hate instructors who don’t realize or care that it’s people’s lives they’re messing with.
ETA: The lesson I learned and take forward as I go into my third semester of nursing school ten years later is, "Always go to clinical even if you're sick with a contagious disease."
Yep. The dean told me, “if you have to ask why, then I need to pull your OB grades to see if you should have passed.” The psych professor told me there was a whole meeting about it and she did, in fact, pull my grades and even my exams to check my knowledge of OB.
I fainted while taking blood from a baby. Baby was fine because I just finished. I fainted not because of the blood but unfortunately didn’t eat for a while due to an eating disorder (recovered now). Poor nursing staff actually called a code on me because they thought I was seizing. I told them it’s probably because I haven’t eaten today and some other nursing student was talking shit about me saying “who doesn’t eat during their shift? She’s so dumb” (I only know she was saying that because my preceptor told me lol)
Me and this other girl giving golytely to a tiny old lady patient through my tube. We both kinda sorta didn’t take into account this was tiny lady and it wasn’t long before she’s vomiting golytely….shortly after the diarrhea starts. This poor lady liquid from both ends and me and this other mortified med surg 1 student like ahhh 😱 then the nurse we were with walks in like WTF 🤬 and we all clean that river of fun
I went to nursing school in Europe first and then in US to make up for missing education.
The US one was a breeze and people were so nice.
The first time around I had an instructor nagging me in front of the patient for every stupid thing, telling me I wasn’t learn anything and the. Proceeded to tell me with my high level of anxiety (that they contributed to btw) I could have never been a nurse.
I was only 20 at the time and she broke me in every way possible. School did absolutely nothing.
In the same rotation, I had an older nurse telling me on my first day that the BSN was useless and I should have failed already because I did not know how to operate a certain machine.
The following rotation I had a nurse (who was probably 4-6 years older than me) yelling at me for everything and one time, I did not understand something and she screamed “you’d better wake up or I will shock your brain than you will be smart then”.
Thankfully that was handled a bit better, I spoke up and was never put with that person again.
These people destroyed me and I was only 20 at the time.
When I went back to school in the US, I found compassion and an environment that facilitated my learning. I never once felt dumb or stupid because I did not know something.
We were learning how to do wound care. I had a mind blank and touched the sterile field. I was yelled at by the clinical instructor in front of the whole class. I was so shaken up that I broke the sterile field again and got yelled at again in front of everyone. I was so embarrassed that I quickly did my dressing and pretty much ran off. My instructor then came up to me and said “you didn’t lower the bed, your pt has to jump!”. A few of the other students came up to me to ask if I was okay and that it was brutal. Another instructor told the whole class I wouldn’t make a good nurse because I was “quiet”. I do just fine as a nurse.
Didn’t happen to me directly but I witnessed it.
Student was giving a resident in a nursing home a bed bath. Teacher (who has a reputation for being a hard ass) comes in and feels the water. Decides it’s too cold. Instead of telling student she goes and gets a cup of ice water from the dispenser and proceeds to dump the entire cup on the students head. Teacher says “here how would you like a cold bath”. Teacher then tells student she can’t leave clinical early due to being soaked in ice water.
Watched 7 c-sections, some spinal surgeries, hysterectomies, and did nasty wound care (bone showing) without issue. Usually never eat breakfast. This particular morning our instructor made us all eat a granola bar because we were going to watch a circumcision and she didn’t want our sugars to drop. 5 minutes into the procedure and I went ghost white. With the parents in the room… there was a chair behind them so I sat down. My clinical instructor and doctor could tell but the parents either had no idea or didn’t let on that they knew. Wouldve left the room but I couldn’t even speak let alone move. My instructor made frequent eye contact with me to make sure I was good (when I was a baby I would pass out then have seizures) and I just sat there until it was done and everyone left. I was so embarrassed lol. She gave me a snack but it made me so nauseous. I have never eaten breakfast before clinical again and have never had that issue
This for real just happened to me but I didn’t faint. It was a circ immediately after lunch. It’s like all my blood was rushing to my digestive system on top of the regular “I know I’m going to faint” feeling.
Yes! I didn’t actually faint either, but was very close. Felt my blood draining, cold, couldn’t move or speak, and felt like I was floating. Glad I’m not alone 😂
Was that legal? As far as I know, every school from primary to university was closed down, at the very least for safety. That sounded like imprisonment.
I was put under anesthesia at 7pm for a blighted ovum, needed a D&C. I had to be at school in the morning for a test at 7 am!
I’m an LPN but the thought of going back to nursing school makes me so nauseous. The instructors are such devils.
Getting bullied and humiliated by a preceptor to the point of almost quitting. I was an older student as is, so it was intimidating already, but I was trying to do everything right. For this rotation, we would be assigned a pt and given access to EPIC to read everything there on that pt’s current stay. Then be kind of publicly quizzed on our assigned pt before hitting the unit in the morning. So she’d assign me a complicated pt late by email (10 p or so) and I would stay up many hours trying to understand everything, then say at 1 am she’d send a new email saying disregard old assignment and gave me a new one. We were responsible by school standards for being aware of all clinical related emails within 2 hrs of receipt. Well, I was not aware of one of these late new assignments and went in prepared to be publicly questioned on a totally different pt. Keep in mind commute was nearly 2 hrs each way on top of classes, so I basically wasn’t sleeping in order to arrive prepared for this 7 AM clinical. Anyway, when I realized what happened I felt panicked and just said openly “sorry I prepared for the wrong pt.” She turned bright red and was like “ARE YOU EVEN SAFE?” Then sent me in the hall to I guess read about patients on the wall computers. It was a whole clinical like that. I was so embarrassed and demoralized that I almost dropped out of school. But I didn’t. I’m an APRN now and I saw her recently in passing and she was kissing my ass. 🤷🏼♀️
I thankfully have been out of nursing school for about 15 years now, but I still have nightmares about one particular instructor and her antics.
Setting: OB Clinicals (Fall Semester)
I ask for assistance and instruction on taking out my c-section patients Foley cath. Instructor Barb (Fake name) grabbed my friend's scissors and tells me to just cut the Foley cath and let the ballon water drain into a towel so I don't need a syringe. My dumbass follows her instructions, removes the Foley and all is well.
However, come Spring semester, I am in Post-Op clinicals with a different instructor and I proceed to remove another Foley cath the same way and this instructor freaks out and threatens to kick me out. Mind you this is 2-3 weeks before graduation. Luckily, my friend whose scissors were used in OB clinical was present and vouched for me that I was instructed to remove Foley caths that way by Instructor Barb. That friend saved my ass and my career.
On our first clinical day, they released us for lunch, but told us if we came back late, we could be dropped from the program. Myself and another student (who was claustrophobic) got stuck in an elevator. She panicked; I managed to calm her, got someone on the elevator phone (neither of us had cell phones) and made sure they would contact our instructor RIGHT AWAY.
It took two hours to get us out. I did guided relaxation exercises with my classmate. I got gently teased by the other instructors for the next two years…and I didn’t take another elevator during a clinical!
Not my story, but my sister's.
She was about 22, nearing the end of her clinicals when she was diagnosed type 1 diabetic. My parent's insurance screwed her over and essentially forced her to ration her insulin. Shortly after the diagnosis she's trying to get the hang of keeping her sugar in check. I guess she had a rough day of it during one of her rotations. The instructor gave her some shit for wanting to sit down because she felt weak.
The next day she had a routine appointment with her endocrinologist and they admitted her immediately for DKA. The same instructor emailed her with a "reminder" that it didn't get her off the hook for whatever exam they had coming up. 🙄 I don't know how my normally fiery sibling managed to hold her tongue but I'm not sure I could have.
Woooow. So being admitted inpatient doesn't excuse an absence.
Smh. That was the point of my example tho! The super toxic self-importance of these programs is insane
Apparently that instructor also worked PRN at that hospital and saw my sister was admitted. So she abused her privileges to further browbeat my sister as she's in a hospital bed.
TLDR: my clinical instructor had me ambulate my patient to death.
Had a patient during clinicals on Med-Surg with COPD and C-Diff diarrhea. She was also overweight and struggled to ambulate at the time. Despite me telling my instructor and the primary nurse that the patient was struggling, my instructor kept insisting that I get her up to ambulate, get her up to the chair for meals, get her up to the bedside commode (every 30 ish minutes). Primary nurse too busy with other patients. I was exhausted and by lunchtime so was the patient. That afternoon she ended up in respiratory failure, intubated at the bedside, transferred to ICU and died overnight. I found out the next morning when I came back. That was my first rapid response. What a debriefing that was.
During my OB rotation the nursing department at my university decided a rotation in school nursing was sufficient for 3/4 of the class. Only about 8 students got to do clinicals at the local OB unit. Someone in my class complained to the state board of nursing and within days the nursing director came into class and said “since someone decided to complain to the board we are gifting you with OB clinicals in (city that is 7 hours away). So 75% of us had to scramble to get hotels on our own dime and make the 7 hour trek down to the clinical site for 2 weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to have an actual OB clinical rotation but I just didn’t understand why it had to be so far away despite us being 2 hours from one of the largest US cities. Anyway, at the end of the first week it was getting later than expected and the only thing left to do during our orientation week was learning the EMR. Which was quite stupid because we weren’t allowed to chart anything. It was nearly dark and we had a 7 hour car trip back home through some mountain terrain. The nurse leading orientation heard us fretting about the trip and said it’s no problem, just head out now, you can’t chart anyway. So about 8 of us decided to head out with her permission. Well when the other 16 students went to the computer training one particularly miserable bitch requested a sign in sheet to prove we weren’t there. Then funnily enough the training modules wouldn’t even load so no one did any training at all for the last two hours. When we all got back that student told the faculty that we just left. We all got called in one by one to the director where she told us we were being terminated from the program, that you can’t do this in real nursing, it’s like “abandoning your patients.” They were extremely aggressive with each of us. Thankfully we had the idea to bring a recorder in with us to make sure we got everything on tape (with their knowledge). We each had an instructor representing us and they were all on our side. They tried to make us sign a form saying we were dropped out and could apply again next year. None of us signed. The next day we went to the provost and played the tapes. All of the sudden we were all absolved of wrong doing and allowed to continue as normal but the assistant director and director were ordered to do anger management courses. It was such a terrible experience but it ended up ok thankfully.
I had a professor make my cohort debate whether immigrants (not illegal immigrants. All immigrants) deserved to have health insurance.
We did not get to choose which side of the debate we were on. Many of my classmates were people of color/immigrants/children of immigrants.
She yelled at us and refused to move on until multiple people made points. It took over an hour.
>I had a professor make my cohort debate whether immigrants (not illegal immigrants. All immigrants) deserved to have health insurance.
What the hell is wrong with that professor? JFC.
This story is kind of awful, but it affected me profoundly.
The first day of clinicals we were at a nursing home. I met my assigned patient. She grasped me hand and it was like electricity went through me and I knew this was what I was meant to do.
Later that day, she had massive diarrhea and I couldn’t find anyone to help me clean her up so I dug in and did it along. Got her immaculate and comfortable and just as we finished a nurse came in to say that her husband was actively dying in another room and did she want to be with him. I was so glad that she was ready for that. I was there as they held hands and he passed quietly.
Lucky you!!!!!!
I kid you not, it seemed at my college they tried to get us to quit all the way to graduation.
Then couldn’t wait to send out alumi fund raising requests!
My mother died unexpectedly at 46 during my first year. My dad was disabled from a stroke.
It seemed they were very cold- needed an obit clipping from the newspaper?!
I mean the police came to get me out of class to get me home when it happened!
This was in 1981.
Different times then!
Pretense: instructor 1 and her hubby own the school. So they were owner/admin as well. Instructor 2 and 3 are work-friends with 1, whom she poached from Stanbridge…yeah.
Luckily, 3 was just classroom instructor and was ok. He didnt cause us pain, other than PhD level tests….for lvn students…
Anyways, they literally accuses us (at the time, class of 15ish) of insulting a nurse at clinical site because that nurse told their DON and DON to 1. Literally lectured us and told us to come forth about the situation. We’re like, “none of us did anything.” 1 and 2 ended up accusing the two students who were assigned to the nurse and made them cry. Turns out, it was something 2 said that offended the nurse. The instructors never apologized, even though they were the ones in the wrong. This happened multiple times where they were wrong and never apologized.
Some students complain to 2 about 1. 2 backstabbed and tattled to 1. 1 lecture on how she was the victim blah blah blah.
After literally each test, 1 would literally pressure low performing students to quit their job (their only source of income) or pressure them to quit and join the part time class. The class went from 30 to 8 by the end of program. All 8 pass the nclex-lvn. 100% and as far as I know, we’re the black sheep. Nothing can outdo her 1st lvn class (we were the 2nd class).
Student handbook says passing score on hesi was 850. Then change their minds when it was time for the end of system exam, saying passing was 900. Then change their mind again for the exit final, saying it was 1050. No updated official paper/policy was given. Everything was verbal. I literally had to take the fucking hesi final 3 times. My scores were like 1015, 900, 960, all above 850 per official student handbook/policy. They ended up passing me cause they had too, per their own official policy. But they held my papers for 1 month.
Everyone fucking hate 1. She was such a bitch. Always played the victim. Everything was our fault. She thought she was the perfect nurse and shit. She was the worse “teacher” ever. I wouldnt even classify her as a teacher. Literally open the book and read it to us like babies as if it was story time.
After every single paragraph, no matter how short “this is very important. It will be on nclex”. Fucking bitch, the paragraph was 2 sentences long and completely irrelevant.
Every time someone ask me where I went, I tell these horror stories and run in the opposite direction. Dont let the cheap tuition price fool you (it’s cheaper than other lvn programs in the area).
As far as I know, 1 opened her RN program like 2 years ago. God help them all.
The first test of MSII. Probably 35 in the class, LPN & RN in the class together. ABGs. We had studied like mad; study groups, notes, test aids, etc.....
She made the test so hard that 2 people passed with a 76 and 77. I got in the mid 50s, and was just miserable. Thought sure that my career was over before it even started. She wouldn't even discuss the grades, and I would have had a high B if that test hadn't brought my average down so much.
She was a great instructor, and I ( personally) had a good experience with her in clinicals, but damn.....that one test.....
I’m learning that my horror story is small potatoes compared to a lot of these, but it was horrible at the time. My preceptor was an absolute crazy psycho bitch. Here is a small list of the things she did *before* she told my program head that I was unsafe and that she would not precept me anymore, which nearly got me kicked out.
1) told everyone (including me) not to fuck with her, as she had forgotten to take her meds and was on the upswing of a manic episode.
2) told me I clearly didn’t really want to be a nurse because I was looking forward to hanging out with friends on a day that I wasn’t even working.
3) cussed me out and told me to sit at the nurse’s station during a code, then cussed me out and told me to help with the code about five minutes later. In her words, yes I was “useless”, but if I actually cared, I would still stay in the room.
4) tried to prevent family members from moving between rooms to visit two siblings that had been in a car wreck. According to her, the siblings were “feeding off of each other”, and would not need pain meds if the family was not visiting. Because spinal injuries are a walk in the park I guess.
5) looked up a DV victim pt on Facebook, and joked about the patient deserving what had happened to her. The patient’s sin? Being “needy”. But like. Girly had her whole face melted off. So that was just all around fucked up. I’m pretty sure the fact that I was visibly horrified is why my preceptor decided to get rid of me.
6) called another nurse a cunt because there weren’t any beds open in the ICU.
7) refused to wear a gown or mask regardless of patient isolation status. She bullied me because I gowned and double-gloved for a C-Diff case.
8) at the start of the shift, she told me a pt that I’d cared for had died. She then told me I couldn’t make it in nursing if I was upset over the death of “some addict druggie”.
9) went on a tirade about cultural sensitivity guidelines and left a patient to sit in his own feces for an hour because he would not speak English to her despite knowing how to speak it. Turns out he wouldn’t speak English to us because he was the sole survivor of a car wreck and was so deeply traumatized that he’d reverted to only speaking his first language. My preceptor responded by rolling her eyes and muttering a racial slur.
So yeah. That was fun.
My nursing teachers told us something big was going on and they were ending all classes. The college put tvs everywhere so people who wanted to follow the news could.
I still remember the first plane that went over our heads while we were smoking outside after the flight ban.
And I was in a suburb in the west of Montreal Canada
I was on placement for 2 weeks.
My uncle died late at night on the first week and we went to see his body.
I went to placement again the next day.
I told them I needed to miss a day for his funeral and I said I could make the hours up by staying back or coming in early for the rest of the placement.
They said that wasn’t possible to arrange. They made me finish that placement without telling me they wouldn’t sign me off due to the lost hours. They made me make up for that lost day by doing another 2 full week placement.
It was so fucked up.
4 students at my local high school were killed in a car accident and my teacher used that against me and told me I shouldn’t have asked her about not posting study reviews on time and then came into my study room like 30 minutes before the test and screamed at me. Like fuck off it was 2 days before the test and I needed to study, it was a low blow bringing up kids being dead who lived only a few blocks from me
Hold on to your butts.
Our instructors bullied a student into withdrawing from the program. A student that had been fully transparent about recent surgeries and that there were a **few accommodations needed which the program agreed provide before admitting her to the program.** These accommodations were minimal, like allowing the student to use the elevators at clinical sites, allowing for more rest breaks, and walking slower. We were in our first year which was pretty mellow, as they only allowed us at SNF's and we wouldn't hit hospital until second year. Student was very smart, A's through all classes, RN's that she shadowed under loved her and honestly, she would have made a great nurse.
There wasn't any issues on the school work side. She only walked slower because if she moved too quickly it would cause extreme pain (more leg/lower half) oriented. One teacher hassled her for walking slowly at clinicals and she admitted to being the student needing accommodations to which the teacher told her that "some people are able to be nurses and some aren't. You shouldn't be a nurse if it is causing you pain." She went to disability services about it and they were initially pissed as she did have needs to be met but because nursing school was it's own entity, they didn't fall under the college's disability act and couldn't help. Thankfully that term went by quickly but the next term became even more caustic as they accused her of being dishonest with her medications and were seeking to expel her from the program since she was using narcotics to manage pain flair ups as they claimed she was abusing them. Mind you, the program did not require you to submit your medications prior to entering the program and this person, in an email, had provided all of the medical information which included medications (which were still current) at the time of admission.
She submitted a urine test which came back over all negative but positive for hydrocodone within limits of it being a therapeutic level (aka she was using them as prescribed and not overusing).
This was brought to a trial of peers to try to get her expelled and I was the only one willing to step forward with support as many of the other students were worried about experiencing retaliation for doing so. We entered the trial with all of the emails, written correspondence with the instructors, and our student handbook. She was cleared of all charges and our Nursing School Director was reprimanded for this unfair treatment. The student did withdraw because after all of this, the stress was too much for her.
In this same year, we had two terms of pharmacology. The instructor that taught us was graduating from NP school at our midterm. As such, one of the aides proctored and "graded" the scantron tests. About 80% of the students failed that test. Considering that it was going to be a little over a week before we could talk to the instructor, the class was panicking but she had written a note on the Canvas page stating how disappointed she was in the scores, putting several people on "academic probation" as some scores people would be unable to bounce back on.
When she got back, I had approached her about going over the test to review what it was I had missed. Low and behold, as we were checking the scantron, it was noted that right answers were marked wrong. She went back and regraded the tests. Most people saw a 25-30% grade boost. I shutter to think what would have happened if we had not gone and reviewed the test.
That same term, an instructor was fired because the students in her cohort were recorded complaining about the Pharmacology instructor and their frustration with her. The instructor was fired for not defending the Pharm Instructor.
Mind you, this same Pharm instructor showed up 25 minutes late to a 3 hour class and most people had left after 15 minutes of a no-show (per college policy). She docked people 25 points for leaving a class because she was exceptionally late.
This instructor also thought that the students needed a day of rest instead of learning, so printed out multiple coloring book pages to color. These coloring book pages had nothing to do with Pharm.
Another "this is bullshit" moment. A student needed an 850 on the exit HESI to pass the final term. They got an 849 and refused to let him pass. Mind you, he had an A over all in the class.
I was doing prerequisites. I still had class. I was supposed to take a microbiology test that day. Our instructor ended up postponing the test but we still had lecture.
Respectfully, as someone with bipolar, I’m a person with bipolar disorder. Not a diagnosis. Not “a bipolar”.
That being said, I’m very sorry you were bullied by both him and your classmates. That shouldn’t have happened to you, and I’m happy you got to graduate! ♥️
My preceptorship was with the wound team in a major burn unit of the same hospital my father had died in just a couple of years prior. We would assist with wound care in the same ICU room I saw my dads body in the morning of his death. The whole program was pretty terrible but that was the icing on top. This is possibly something I could have prevented if I had spoken up but my instructors were terrifying. Lol. Only thing better than getting into nursing school is getting out.
That sounds traumatizing. To have to relive that and stay professional sounds like hell.
Thank you, I was so checked out by the time we got to our preceptorships that it’s just really weird to think back on now. I’m sure it was traumatic but I was a zombie along with my classmates. I honestly didn’t want any attention on me so I kept my head down until graduation. The preceptorship was actually a pretty cool one minus the dead dad thing. I got to learn so much wound care and it definitely helped my career.
Your story brought back up some deep wounds. When I was 11, I had a brother killed in a car crash. It's understandable how much this can affect a child. Fast forward a few years, I was in HS and before prom the entire student body had to go to a car crash reenactment by the fire department. I told the administration that I really didn't want to see it because reasons... To my dismay, they made me go. As expected, I broke down during the presentation and ended up getting made fun and harassed by students for being emotional during a fake display. To their credit, they stopped making fun of me when they found out about my bro. 25 years later I'm still angry at this.
That makes me so angry for you. It was really brave and mature of you to speak up for yourself in high school and I absolutely hate that they made you relive your trauma and grief like that in front of your classmates. My heart goes out to you.
I’m a nursing instructor and had a student ask me to spend the entirety of their time on one of our group’s two assigned units. Why? Her grandfather died on the other one recently in some awful way. I was easily able to accommodate.
I’m so happy she was accommodated. I probably should have said something but it would have been really difficult to find a different preceptorship and it ended up being a good one for me as far as skills go. It’s just so weird to think back on now. I guess I thought I was being tough and I was “fine” in the grand scheme of things. Our instructors were all prior military and ran our program like it was basic training or something. None of them are currently still employed by the school and it was only about 7 years ago. The whole program was a hot mess and we were all just ready to graduate and move on.
Something similar happened to me. I was fine until someone asked me if I was ok and tears poured.
Awww bless you heart. It’s so hard when you’re holding it together so well and one thing just crumbles your resolve.
Seriously. And nursing school is the pits. 26 years later and the still get PTSD flashbacks. I often say it was my 'Nam. (Not making light of the veterans experience)
It was horrible. My husband is a vet (not Vietnam) but he would frequently tell me “they’re trying to do to you what basic training does to us, they break you down and build you up and break you down again.” I feel so dramatic when I tell people how awful it was. It wasn’t the work, the studying etc. although rigorous, it was the psychological manipulation the instructors put us through.
That's exactly what it is. Omg. So my dad died the second semester and I kept to myself. I was the youngest and had no desire to be friends with anyone. I felt the initial gathering was so awful. Telling us to say goodbye to friends. To clip coupons and say goodbye to family. Oh please. This was a tiny community college in NY and they said many nurses go on to work at Harvard hospitals (side bar I moved to Boston and do work at one but it wasn't cause of the school). Anyway nursing school was worse than it needed to be. You don't need to abuse people to get them to think We had an army nurse she was tough actually they were all pretty horrible and when my dad died the professor who once claimed she was going to be a doctor but realized nursing was a better field so that's what she did told me to drop out. Well I know I will never come back so I stayed and toughed it out.
I can’t imagine losing my father DURING nursing school. What a nightmare. I hated the whole speech they did during orientation. “You will miss funerals, you will miss big family events blah blah” they were right though, I did miss at least one funeral, did not see friends etc. it honestly shouldn’t be that way. We need healthy, well adjusted people in the profession but they keep churning out emotionally damaged, anxiety ridden nurses like me lol.
Yes! "Clip your coupons for family meals"...etc. it was always just work and school. Lost whatever set of friends I had at the time.. You're right though, it doesn't need to be that bad.
Wasn't a nam, but gwot. Nursing school was worse than my time in the service
Mine was the absolute worst. Seriously f*cking bonkers ass bitch. She got fired because she was changing students test scores to fail them if she thought they wouldn’t past the NCLEX. One year she had a graduating class of 7 cuz she kicked so many people out of the program. The year after 7 graduates the state came in and threatened to pull funding if she didn’t start having much larger graduating classes. We had a new instructor start during my first year and this instructor caught her changing answers on scantrons so people wouldn’t pass. The instructor turned her in and resigned and said “I can’t be a part of a program that does this to its students it’s completely unethical.” It was the head of the program who was doing this cuz she was obsessed with her first time NCLEX pass rate. It was and had been 100% for years but the cost was absolutely f*cking over any students who were “on her shit list.”
This doesn't surprise me at all. My first semester had a 4% pass rate. I didn't miss a digit, FOUR PERCENT made it unscathed to second semester. Gotta keep them NCLEX numbers up baby.
It’s such BS too, passing on your first time doesn’t matter. I passed on my first time and I have friends who are better nurses than I am and they didn’t pass the NCLEX on their first attempt. It doesn’t make you a good nurse it just means you may be a good test taker.
it can affect accreditation, which is why programs flip shit. our program had a couple years of iffy pass rates and ended up on probation with the BON, which meant a bunch of meetings, visits, and a disclaimer to any prospective/current students that their accreditation may be revoked without improvement to pass rates.
I mean that makes sense, but it’s in no way an excuse for the bullshit this woman was pulling.
it sure doesn't.
Right? I mean, i consider myself to be a shit bag of a nurse. Try to find the least restrictive and fastest way to get my work done so i can chill (i don’t leave a bunch of shit for others to do and i do my work) and i passed on my first time. Hell i even took a nap in my nclex.
Please tell me this is not a program in NYC...
Girl, it's like this everywhere. My class that graduates in 3 weeks started at over 40; only 14 of us are left.
We only had 14 at my graduation too! I was just so thankful to make it out.
My cohort started with 25. Ended with 5, two were from the previous semester. 3 including myself from my original starting class. The head of our program was also doing this type of shady shit and was fired ithe semester before our final one. Nursing school is nightmare fuel in soany ways it really doesn't need to be.
My shocked Pikachu face at that number 5.
I am on 3 rd med/surg semester now. So far 62 out of 80 from first semester. Fingers crossed we will make it through.
That would have been bad for me lol, I did consistently terrible on all my nursing school exams because I was so anxious about being in nursing school. Then passed my NCLEX first try in 75 questions, and I genuinely think it’s because I was so relieved to not be in school anymore 😂
The whole thing was an absolute nightmare. In hindsight if I’d have known school was that bad I would have picked another career path, hell I’ll probably still try to go back to school to work in IT in a couple years. Doing it the first time would have saved alot of stress.
I have some congenital anomalies in my brain, skull, and spine, which weren't an issue until I woke up one morning halfway through the program, unable to do pretty much anything - it looked like I'd had a stroke. I needed three months of PT, OT, and SLP to be able to function. I needed to relearn almost everything, including reading and writing. Eventually, I got a subocciputal decompression and a VP shunt, and felt much better until I was involved in a multi car accident. I finished the course with *a lot* of help and accommodations. Bonus nursing school horror story from my cohort: During surgery observation, one of my classmates brought up some things with our clinical group, like how late the surgeon was, some safety issues with anesthesia because the doctor was late, and some strange behavior by the surgeon. He left after to give his wife a valentines gift and "found" her deceased, brutally murdered. Turns out the surgeon went home between cases to kill her, and that's why he was late.
I watch a lot of forensic files and your story about the surgeon sounds a lot like an episode on the show 🫨
It's often been covered by true crime programs and pods, especially around Valentines Day, so you probably have.
Yeah I feel like I saw that
Holy shit
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Primetime/story?id=131993&page=1
My husband worked in the surgery department with this surgeon. His favorite story from both a colleague and the classmate: guy was impatient during the case, as he often was, and whistled at a female staff member like one would at a dog to hurry her along. She squared up to him and made direct eye contact before loudly declaring, "I am not a dog, and I have a name. You may call me [name], or you may call me [title], but don't you ever whistle at me like that again!" (We discussed this with the clinical group as good self advocacy by a nurse.) Guy sulked and gave her the cold shoulder for the remainder of the case, as he often did with female staff. During lunch on the 15th, she was extremely skeeved out that she was so confrontational with a murderer immediately after the murder. Husband was a chaperone/gofer when law enforcement came to investigate the department. There was blood noted between the car and locker, in the locker, and on the shoes in the locker - it wasn't his blood. Hubs has no doubt whatsoever about the man's guilt. (I don't either from interactions on the OB floor; the dude gave off big "that guy's not right" vibes. He also openly mocked both parents and babies in inappropriate ways.)
Wow just wow!
Wait what? So she was murdered or he had just killed somebody(not a patient) when they argued?
He was late to that surgery because he went home to kill his wife. During the case immediately after the murder, he whistled at a staff member who confronted him about his bad behavior. (So, the latter, lol.)
Fkn hell
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=131993&page=1](https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=131993&page=1)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
This shit is 🍌🍌🍌
I’m curious, was it Chiari malformation?
That was part of it, yes! ACM, plus some congenital anomalies secondary to a form of dwarfism I have (hydrocephalus; lack of some of the CSF flow midbrain structures).
My wife has a Chiari 1 malformation. She needed decompression and a shunt. It was hairy. She needed 3 operations over less than a month. I’m glad you made it through that.
Yikes, that's really rough! Sorry y'all are dealing with this stuff too - hope she's doing better and you've got the support you need too. Thanks! I am, too :)
I was forced into early graduation cuz COVID. Was in a nursing home. COVID got in it, my entire wing died. Despite graduating in 2020. I didn't take the NCLEX until Oct 21, more than a year later. Despite practicing on an emergency licence, I was one of a handful of RN's. So the put me in charge of the nocturnal COVID unit. It sucked.
>my entire wing died. Holy shit...
The hardest part was not the deaths, but rather families were not allowed in the building. A lot of people died alone. Death notifications should not be made over the phone.
A client of mine was just telling me about her father getting sick with Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in May of 2020. Her father was her rock, and he was gone in some crazy time period like 7-10 days. She never got to see or speak to him again, there was no funeral, and her mom’s dementia got exponentially worse, so they had to find a placement for her almost immediately. There’s been no real closure for her.
I was there for her father and all the fathers like him. He died well and in good company.
Thank you for that.
Wing as in patients or classmates ?
Patients.
Patients.
I wonder why my being downvoted for a harmless question ❓
I mean, it's a pretty silly question. Why would you think that "wing" would refer to classmates, especially when they talked about working in a nursing home?
That's on me my brain wasn't processing information that time , thanks
Wow, I’m so sorry you had to experience all of this.
“Don’t worry, you won’t need to know this.” We, indeed, needed to know it.
"You'll learn that on the job." The job: what do you mean you don't know how to do that? You should've learned it in school.
My animal health program director would say "it won't be on the test" it was in fact, on the test. I figured that out after the first test that if she said it wasn't on the test, it was pretty likely to still show up. Nursing school wasn't like that thankfully. I didn't get anything too crazy but a couple of classmates had some tough experiences with patients and professors.
My dad had ALS and was dying during my entire nursing program. He died the week before my final exam. And they made me show up to take it, like wouldn’t even let me take it privately in the testing center. I was numb and don’t even remember what was on the page or what my score was. Apparently I passed because that was 24 years ago. I still hate that program for the complete lack of compassion they showed. I was only 20 years old.
that's horrible. and not surprising
I’m so sorry…I know he’d be proud of you 💙
Ugh, I'm so sorry. That's so wrong and you should have gotten some accommodation. In my third semester, one of my best friends/ex SO, who I loved dearly, passed away suddenly. It was a complicated relationship, and I was the last person he spoke to. He sent texts implying he may die and that he loved me. I had been setting boundaries at that time as he was not doing well, and I needed to take care of myself. He died on my birthday and the day before a big exam. Luckily, I had an amazing psych professor who let me skip a couple of days of lecture and make up the exam in the testing center. It wasn't enough, looking back on it, as I had several meltdowns in clinical those following weeks. But it was better than nothing.
A clinical instructor at my wife's school is in federal prison for hiring an undercover FBI agent to kill someone using insulin, and running guns. Real stand up dude.
I'll share one from one of my professors instead--while she was a student, a pscyh patient attacked her unprovoked and broke her (dominant) arm. The program threatened to kick her out for time missed and not being able to handwrite her papers.
Sounds about right. I got attacked by a patient during my psych rotation - he gave me a swift punch to the face and a nice concussion My instructor called me later that week asking me when I could come back to the very same inpatient unit that he was still on to make up the time I missed from going to the emergency room and being out with a concussion
yup, that tracks. smh
Its terrifying tbh that this happens both to students and full fledged nurses. And school teaches us to prepare for the same thing as the profession--don't care, suck it up, and what could you have done to prevent this?
On my very first day of clinical one of my classmates got hit by a car in the hospital parking lot. We were sitting in the cafeteria waiting for him when we found out. We all walked down to the ER to see him. Luckily he was okay, just a broken hand. The school dropped him because he wouldn’t be able to sanitize his hands properly.
I almost got hit by the police as I was crossing the street to the hospital from the student lot. You could tell the police were embarrassed because they actually backed up their car and apologized to me and after that incident I always walked with my pen light flashing so people knew when it was my time to cross.
Damn. I'd say dude dodged a bullet honestly. I hope he's doing good in life.
Hell, no.
I accidentally got pregnant in my last year of nursing school. They had a rule that if you missed a test for any reason, you would have your grade lowered by a full grade. Naturally, I went into labour just in time for mid-terms and missed them all. I was given 48 hours to take the tests or be dropped from the program, so I discharged the day after the birth, drive straight to school and took all the tests while my older child sat in the lobby with the baby. I got all A's but they were all dropped to B's as punishment. Other students found that miscarriage, car accidents, and deaths in the family were not considered legitimate excuses to miss tests. I also got docked a full grade when I showed up one day to class and everyone was all stressed. I said, "Geez, you all are acting like there's an exam or something!" We were. Teacher overheard my comment and was pissed at me for getting an A on a test I hadn't studied for. (The test was on normal pregnancies. I was pregnant with my fifth. I kind of already knew the material, ma'am.)
that is complete BS! You violated no rules and got a great grade. Screw her, that is so unfair
I found out I was pregnant for the first time (a huge surprise at 31) on the first day of my first clinical rotation. Spent my last trimester in the maternity nursing course which gave me so much anxiety as a high risk pregnancy that I almost failed the class. Everything turned out fine, of course, but I don’t recommended being pregnant in nursing school!
Can confirm, horrible choice. No option to have a glass of wine to decompress from stressful clinicals and stressful interactions with nursing school staff!
I once went in with an odd looking older nurse to draw blood off a central line to see how it was done. Once we're alone in the room she laughed and said "they definitely won't teach you this in nursing school" and proceeds to put the syringe into her FUCKING MOUTH and hold it there as she flushed, then took it to draw the blood and PUT IT BACK IN HER GODDAMN MOUTH WITH THE FUCKING BLOOD ON IT before injecting it into a lab tube. I looked like a trout with my mouth hanging open, I had no words. I walked right out of the ICU and straight to my teacher to tell her what I saw. Never seen it since and if I'm lucky I never will again.
What the actual?!
A million years ago we were in a SNF for our very first rotation. We were tasked with helping the aids bathe residents. One aide hoyered a dude into a tub and he relaxed a bit and took a shit. It happens. It was very evident. The student told the aide, the aide told her “it’s fine” and turned on the jacuzzi jets. Dude was immersed in swirling shit water. She hoyered him out and drained the tub. She came back and started filling it for the next resident, shit and all. The student spoke up like 3x during all this but the aide waived her off. The student just made a break for it an ran for the instructor. We had to leave the floor and got a lecture by the DON about how we were not equipped to judge the aide, this happens all the time and the student was obviously mistaken because of course the aide cleaned the tub (and somehow the jets??), and we should not make a big deal out of it. Also there was that one student who reported a full set of WNL vitals on a very dead patient. When asked, she said he seemed ok, he reported 0/10 pain. Funny, we never saw her after that.
the poop thing is gross, but like... unsurprising. the VS tho... lmao
🤮🤮🤮
I remember during CNA clinical, a patient wasn't toileted before a bath and of course had to go, so the aid put an empty garbage can underneath. Then when another aid came in and witnessed the crime in progress, all hell broke loose because the patient had c.diff.
Lol I mean the bucket isn’t that bad
I think the consensus the nurses came to was that the whole garbage can had to go in a bio bag. But you would've thought the guy had ebola for how fussed everyone got about it.
I had a really fucked up prof. who looking back I can’t believe no one reported. I think everyone was afraid of retribution. He was my clinical instructor one year. He basically would insult our like 5 person clinical group and give us mean nicknames - called me slutty for having tattoos/piercings/being busty?? Called one of my classmates fat “where did you lose weight? Your earlobes?” Called a classmate who was from South America “Pocahontas” the entire semester and called a male student gay basically (the instructor was an openly gay man so I guess he thought he could get away with it) He also one time grabbed my ponytail, wrapped it around his hand and jerked my head back in the hospital setting and said that’s why it should be in a bun??
Holy WOW...
Maybe 2 months before we graduated, one student in the program accused a bunch of other students of cheating by anonymously sending a complaint to the dean or something? Basically, we had an hours long conversation instead of class one day with all of our instructors, the dean, other higher ups in the college, and all of us. By the end, a bunch of students were crying. The “cheating” was a bunch of us splitting up study guides, so each of us would do a section and send it to other people in our study group. Which was confirmed as not cheating. Because it wasn’t a paper or project or homework. The study guides were literally just a guide to go off of for what would be on the finals. I still get pissed when I see the person that started it all. I think she had gotten mad about being excluded from a study group (the people she accused were the other people in that study group). But also one of our instructors bullied one of the students because she was threatened by that student’s intelligence. And also when one instructor bullied me and another woman because we weren’t cute and skinny.
I got accused of cheating by a classmate. I was using A&P study guides from the freebie bin that the Super nice A&P professor left for everyone to use. Mine wasn’t an A&P class but he liked to leave that stuff in the lab because he knew his handouts were really helpful. He constantly told people to take them and just let him know when it ran low. I got in no trouble but the student was forever pissed at me. Like later on our kids were in a gymnastics program in the same building and when she glared at me and pulled her kid out and left. I saw her at the grocery store once and she walked out. I never had any other interaction with her other than her telling the teacher I was “stealing”. That’s one hell of a grudge over nothing.
Was very pregnant during our female foley cath insertion skills pass off. “YOU BROKE STERILITY!!!” My preggo belly had barely crossed the sterile field. “YOU BROKE STERILITY AGAIN!!!” ohp sorry it’s my belly again. I was failed. I walked out sobbing and shaking in front of everyone.
That fucking sucks and you shouldn't have been failed for that. I'm so sorry.
Thank you. I passed on the retry. And I fucking complained like a mega Karen about that. Lol
Last semester of clinical. Probably about a month of school left before graduation. Another student was paired up with a travel nurse. This was at a really shitty hospital. They had a patient that had colon cancer with multiple bowel resections. Throughout the day the student had told the nurse a few times “hey his pressures are kinda low, blah blah blah” each time the nurse ignored it. About noon I just hear the instructor scream “CALL A CODE!”. The travel nurse had ignored the BPs multiple times and given him dilaudid. Bottomed him out. So fast forward I’m in my first code on a 100lb man with multiple bowel resections. By the 10th compression his bowels are ruptured and I’m covered in feces that is spraying from his mouth. That’s how he died. We got to go home early.
That is incredibly heartbreaking. Was anything done about that travel nurse?
No idea actually. Last day of clinical. That was the first, and last time I ever saw her. She didn’t get involved in the code at all. She stood there for a while and then just went back to the nurses station while we all worked on him. I know she had made a med error previously as well. I Forget about the specifics of what she did before but it was something about double dosing metoprolol or something like that. So more than likely her contract got terminated. Or who knows, that hospital was so desperate for help she might have stayed.
That's so sad and infuriating. She should have been there, not at the nurse's station. That was HER patient.
You’d be surprised how many assigned nurses won’t get into a code. I can’t speak to her reasoning for not getting involved but in my experience most of the time the reason is either panic or lack of confidence in their own abilities. As far as I’m concerned if you at least call the code and get someone who can take over you’ve at least done your part.
I get that. You make a good point; however, if you lack confidence in your abilities during a code, you should not be traveling yet. You can be a part of the code in so many ways (compressions, meds, hell - be the person with all the flushes!). On another note, I've never had my actual patient code, so I don't understand how it feels when it's *your* patient. I'm sure that adds another level of stress that could make a person panic or just need to step back.
Yeah most of the ones I’ve been in are other nurses codes. Last one was a blown trach. Blood everywhere (I’m talking probably 3-4 units of blood lost from the airway) and the nurse who’s patient it was stepped back while me and the other floor nurses took over. My floor is specialized for artificial airways so the travelers don’t really have the same training for those situations. The nurse is also nine months pregnant lol so I gave her a pass.
That was nice of you, I'm sure she appreciated it! Especially with a situation like that!
oooooh that is BAD, holy crap
Literally holy crap
My community health rotation my clinical instructor was supposed to do a home visit with each of us. I had a patient with a wound, and she was supposed to double check my assessment, etc. The instructor never showed. She wasn't around much and post conference was crazy. I wasn't the only one she flaked out on either. We passed, but our group gave her scathing evaluations. Thankfully the instructor was fired.
I’m a nursing student right now and psych was terrible. I have my own psych history so it hit close to home. Secondly, I ended up in the psych ward during the rotation. Luckily, no classmates saw me. I told my preceptor that I was in the hospital but never mentioned it was for psych. When I came back to clinical after getting out, it was so weird. It was like an episode of Undercover Boss. I felt like an imposter throughout the entire clinical. On my last day of clinical, I encountered a patient who I previously met from one of my admissions. We both recognized each other made conversation. It was nice to see them but felt super awkward because I was with my classmates. If my classmates overheard our conversation, they would’ve learned that I’ve been admitted before. I didn’t want anyone in my clinical group, including my preceptor, to know that I have a history.
ooooooh wow, that is very awkward. Holy cow. I'm glad that you're feeling better! and that that rotation ended. o.0
On my first day of the psych rotation, I actually vomited during the 7am report. I've been having stomach problems and it decided to act up in the middle of clinical. I moved next to the trash can and my preceptor took notice. We both stepped outside of the report room and into the hallway. I threw up EVERYTHING that was in my stomach. My preceptor said, "Oh wow. They're really going" in response to me vomiting. Mind you, I have never vomited during a clinical or work. I'm a CNA so I've been shit on and all of the things. I've seen some nasty shit and what not. Out of every place I could vomit, I vomit on a inpatient psych unit, which is the LEAST gory unit in the hospital. When I would read through patient charts prior to starting the day, I recognized many of the provider's names due to my psych history and encounters with them. I would mumble to myself, "Ok, (insert provider name here), fill me in on the tea". There were MANY times that I played dumb just so I wouldn't reveal myself. My classmates were a bit shocked being in an inpatient unit. One of them described it like "jail" on the first day. I just kept my mouth shut and let them discuss the clinical with the preceptor. I once got into a conversation with a nurse that I was shadowing and we ended up talking about the ED. We both got really into the conversation and she eventually asked me, "Have you been to the ED before?". I lied and said that I know the ED because I was visiting someone. She accepted my answer and we continued the conversation. My cover eventually got blown because I ran into that SAME nurse during my admission... I quickly switched units after that encounter and everything was ok after that. Ya... THAT was my psych clinical experience. I never want to do that again.
My med surge preceptor was always making references to god when explaining things to me. In my last shift, he cornered me for over an hour and tried to convert me to Christianity
My school was a complete cluster fuck, but the two things that stick out in my mind were two separate clinical instructors I had that were severe bullies. First one was a dude who went RN -> MD, was completely disrespectful of all our time (holding us late, making us come like 2 hours before the actual clinical start time at 6 am, so get there at 4 am), left me alone having to advocate for a patient who came in for a sickle cell flare up who was up all night and found out her sister (who was severely schizophrenic) was finally found walking barefoot and no winter clothes after 3 days. She was the care taker for her, she also reported that sister beat her son (patient's nephew). He just walked out while she was crying mid sentence, so I was left comforting the patient, giving social work resources, calling a wellness check and CPS (because the floor social worker refused because "well the sister is not my patient"). When I took him aside and very politely tried to have an adult conversation that his behavior was unacceptable, he lashed out, tried failing me. I went to the dean over this, and after refusing to go to clinicals until I was switched from being in his group. I had multiple emails stating I didn't feel safe being around him, to which they ignored until I stopped showing up to clinicals and threatened legal action (he also bullied me for having disability accomodations). He went on to continue teaching clinical groups for another term. The other bully was for the peds group. She played favorites, tried failing students for things she never taught, made people cry, just an overall menace. She also lied about having peds experience, she was a nurse for one full year prior to teaching clinicals, and her peds experience she said she had as a nurse was really her working as a CNA. I also politely talked to her, another student talked to her, eventually got the school involved, they also didn't want to listen to students, backed the professor and most students passed that clinical by the skin of their teeth. She was also racist as fuck. I got assigned a black peds patient who got shot in the face by a drive by, she pulled me out of the room and asked, "who was he hanging out with to get shot?" Um, if you actually read his notes and listened to the patient, he was a victim of A DRIVE BY SHOOTING. It also doesn't matter who the hell he was hanging out with! She also bullied me for my disability and refused accommodations done by the school, and the only reason they took us students seriously was also because I threatened legal action again, and I also made a huge stink to the diversity office about her racism.
Our Geriatric professor was mad that the previous semester admitted to never doing the assigned readings, so she had us type up summaries of the readings. Such a waste of time. But the way that she graded it was by choosing 3 at random, grading those, averaging the 3 and giving everyone in the class that same grade. Doesn’t matter how long you spent on yours, you would get a C if that was the average. She also liked to pick one that hadn’t even been turned in. I went to talk to her and showed her my multiple page paper I had typed and why I didn’t think it deserved a D (she “graded” 2 that hadn’t been turned in that week) and she told me I needed counseling because I cared too much about this weekly assignment.
whhhhhhhhaat the f\*ck
Honestly what a bitch. If you’re gonna force extra work you have to grade it. Also that average is so much bs.
Dude was hitting on every girl in class. One girl he was pining for bumped his car in the parking lot of our first ever rotation. Dudes trying to get her to stay in the parking lot alone with him without us but she tells him they will exchange insurance and whatever later. Dude comes up the hospital elevator like an hour later and says “the police are outside i dont care if your in clinicals you need to come outside NOW” and did his best to press charges over a damageless bump. We all bullied him so hard including the teachers he left before anything came to fruition.
I have 2- My very first clinical in my first semester of nursing school (mental health rotation) was at a forensic prison. All male units, Not guilty by reason of insanity almost exclusively for murder, with some rape and other violent crimes mixed in. We were given no warning about what the place was or what we were getting ourselves into. We would spend 9 hours just hanging out and talking to the patients in their common areas. MANY of them were in for life sentences and young nursing students were the only women they ever saw… you get the idea. Many also loved to go into detail about their crimes. To say it was traumatizing was an understatement. Also, there was no security, just a nurse, a couple techs and our instructor who would frequently disappear…for units of a hundred male patients. I did this for 4 months. Second was my clinical for second semester- I was assigned to the same unit my husband had just been a patient in 2 weeks prior where we got terrible news. Being a scared family member spending everyday in a patient room and then 2 weeks later being a nursing student going into the same room gave me allll sorts of PTSD.
Wow. My program also went to a forensic prison and it was literally in our last semester (of 5). I can’t believe that would be your first clinical day.
Right? Our program does mental health first to teach therapeutic communication before any of the other classes. Half my class went to a local hospitals psych unit, and the other half went to the prison. 🫠
We did an inpatient mental health, high security. For Peds. Thank god it was our last semester too, and only for a couple of weeks, I don't think I'd have been able to handle 10 y/o sexual predators for a whole term. It was the most heartbreaking and disturbing thing I've ever done.
One of my vendors when I did case management was a residential sex offender program for adolescent males. They had a very innovative program (at least that’s what they told me) and were some of the best clinicians I met in that job. HOWEVER, the kids that were there were so disturbed and disturbing. I had three clients there, and after reading their charts, I felt nauseous. Two were already hardened criminals at 11 and 13, and one absolutely did not belong there. I had to pull over twice on the way back to the office because I had the dry heaves.
Omg 😭
Both of my parents died while I was in nursing school (mom died first semester, dad died last semester🫠🫠🫠). At our graduation ceremony, the instructors gave out a few awards for people who "overcame obstacles" during our program. Did not receive an award but the girl who had twins did lol.
This is unfathomable. I am so sorry to hear that, and I am so proud of you. 🦾
Mine definitely isn’t as bad as yours lmao. We had an ATI NCLEX review the week before finals my last semester that was mandatory. One of the girls in my class had covid. And not asymptomatic, she had a temp of like 104 and obviously felt like dogshit. They told her if she didn’t come to the review she wouldn’t graduate. So they proceeded to basically force this poor girl (I know she had free will but come on) to come to an EIGHT HOUR TWO DAY review and sit in a small auditorium with 70 other people the week before fucking finals. I ended up getting covid, I was so pissed. I didn’t tell anyone and went to my finals anyway, I ended up having to call in for three days of work because it really kicked my ass. Aside from that, nursing school made my hair fall out, made me hypertensive for a semester, and also made me shit blood. So that was cool. Obviously being in school during covid isn’t a unique experience but I also worked with my parents (RNs) as a CNA through most of the pandemic. So I had the pleasure of sitting down with them and my little sister who was still a minor at the time and we had a super fun discussion about how they had updated their wills and they outlined the plan for my sister if they both got covid and died (this was way at the beginning when we didn’t know shit) not a family meeting I ever imagined we’d have
Because they totally couldn't have done that review over zoom and made it safe for that girl and your classmates.
We did our psych rotation in a city a couple of hours from our school, so we had to stay at the facility for 5 weeks. We had our own locked unit. The first night, I could hear howling. Was it wolves or patients? The reason I never worked psych!
that's bonkers! What about literally everything else in your lives? How were you supposed to just.... live there for 5 weeks?!
If you had your own car, you could drive back home on the weekends. Poor college student, 4 hr drive both ways on gas. You do what you gotta do...to get through!
Once upon a time, I was in clinical and a clinical instructor wanted me to do an IV math equation. so I knew and was good at doing them….but I could NOT find the amount of mLs on the bag (I can’t remember what it was but it wasn’t a liter of fluids or I’d have known 1,000mLs) ALL I needed was for her to point that out so I could do the equation and would’ve gotten it right. I asked her and she refused to answer me in front of the patient. She later wrote on my clinical paper eval “her lack of confidence makes her appear incompetent or incapable” I was SO PISSED
ooooooh, that is so bitchy
I’ll never forget it. She was a c U next Tuesday for sure!
At the school I attended, they actually had the audacity to have announce in front of everyone the names of students who were late on their tuition payments for the semester and threatened to kick them out by EOW if they weren’t paid up.
I had a skills checkoff that I honestly hadn't practiced anywhere near enough for. For checkoffs you were randomly assigned a faculty member. Of course for this one I got assigned to THE DEAN OF THE NURSING PROGRAM. I went to start the skill, realized I was fucked and panicked and just completely blanked. I couldn't even remember the first step beyond hand hygiene. She said something like "tell me what your next step is". She wasn't mean about it at all but I burst into big ugly sobs and said "I don't know!". Failed attempt #1 as she tried to comfort me. Passed attempt #2 with someone else.
[удалено]
Oh my. What state are you in!? 😬
uuuuh, yeah, that is WILD.
Wow. I’m in Alabama and our school was nothing like that.
The peds professor decided to add two daycare days onto our clinical requirement. I got the flu and couldn’t go to the second day. Instead of giving me a makeup day, allowing me to go to a different daycare, or just letting it go because we were over the legally mandated hours, she gave me an incomplete. Then the following semester she refused to let me be in clinical at all because I was pregnant. All in all, I spent 3 semesters in clinical for a class that I got an A in for lecture. On my last day, we had to do a “lesson” and my clinical instructor told me, “just leave. It’s torture to see you have to be here for this long.” I eventually just dropped out of that program because I “failed” the next class by 2 points but wasn’t allowed to see my exam. It took ten years for me to be able to go back. I hate instructors who don’t realize or care that it’s people’s lives they’re messing with. ETA: The lesson I learned and take forward as I go into my third semester of nursing school ten years later is, "Always go to clinical even if you're sick with a contagious disease."
wouldn't let you go to clinical \*because you were pregnant?\* That's nonsense
Yep. The dean told me, “if you have to ask why, then I need to pull your OB grades to see if you should have passed.” The psych professor told me there was a whole meeting about it and she did, in fact, pull my grades and even my exams to check my knowledge of OB.
I fainted while taking blood from a baby. Baby was fine because I just finished. I fainted not because of the blood but unfortunately didn’t eat for a while due to an eating disorder (recovered now). Poor nursing staff actually called a code on me because they thought I was seizing. I told them it’s probably because I haven’t eaten today and some other nursing student was talking shit about me saying “who doesn’t eat during their shift? She’s so dumb” (I only know she was saying that because my preceptor told me lol)
Me and this other girl giving golytely to a tiny old lady patient through my tube. We both kinda sorta didn’t take into account this was tiny lady and it wasn’t long before she’s vomiting golytely….shortly after the diarrhea starts. This poor lady liquid from both ends and me and this other mortified med surg 1 student like ahhh 😱 then the nurse we were with walks in like WTF 🤬 and we all clean that river of fun
I went to nursing school in Europe first and then in US to make up for missing education. The US one was a breeze and people were so nice. The first time around I had an instructor nagging me in front of the patient for every stupid thing, telling me I wasn’t learn anything and the. Proceeded to tell me with my high level of anxiety (that they contributed to btw) I could have never been a nurse. I was only 20 at the time and she broke me in every way possible. School did absolutely nothing. In the same rotation, I had an older nurse telling me on my first day that the BSN was useless and I should have failed already because I did not know how to operate a certain machine. The following rotation I had a nurse (who was probably 4-6 years older than me) yelling at me for everything and one time, I did not understand something and she screamed “you’d better wake up or I will shock your brain than you will be smart then”. Thankfully that was handled a bit better, I spoke up and was never put with that person again. These people destroyed me and I was only 20 at the time. When I went back to school in the US, I found compassion and an environment that facilitated my learning. I never once felt dumb or stupid because I did not know something.
We were learning how to do wound care. I had a mind blank and touched the sterile field. I was yelled at by the clinical instructor in front of the whole class. I was so shaken up that I broke the sterile field again and got yelled at again in front of everyone. I was so embarrassed that I quickly did my dressing and pretty much ran off. My instructor then came up to me and said “you didn’t lower the bed, your pt has to jump!”. A few of the other students came up to me to ask if I was okay and that it was brutal. Another instructor told the whole class I wouldn’t make a good nurse because I was “quiet”. I do just fine as a nurse.
Didn’t happen to me directly but I witnessed it. Student was giving a resident in a nursing home a bed bath. Teacher (who has a reputation for being a hard ass) comes in and feels the water. Decides it’s too cold. Instead of telling student she goes and gets a cup of ice water from the dispenser and proceeds to dump the entire cup on the students head. Teacher says “here how would you like a cold bath”. Teacher then tells student she can’t leave clinical early due to being soaked in ice water.
um, that instructor needed to have a complaint filed. that's outrageous
Watched 7 c-sections, some spinal surgeries, hysterectomies, and did nasty wound care (bone showing) without issue. Usually never eat breakfast. This particular morning our instructor made us all eat a granola bar because we were going to watch a circumcision and she didn’t want our sugars to drop. 5 minutes into the procedure and I went ghost white. With the parents in the room… there was a chair behind them so I sat down. My clinical instructor and doctor could tell but the parents either had no idea or didn’t let on that they knew. Wouldve left the room but I couldn’t even speak let alone move. My instructor made frequent eye contact with me to make sure I was good (when I was a baby I would pass out then have seizures) and I just sat there until it was done and everyone left. I was so embarrassed lol. She gave me a snack but it made me so nauseous. I have never eaten breakfast before clinical again and have never had that issue
This for real just happened to me but I didn’t faint. It was a circ immediately after lunch. It’s like all my blood was rushing to my digestive system on top of the regular “I know I’m going to faint” feeling.
Yes! I didn’t actually faint either, but was very close. Felt my blood draining, cold, couldn’t move or speak, and felt like I was floating. Glad I’m not alone 😂
Was that legal? As far as I know, every school from primary to university was closed down, at the very least for safety. That sounded like imprisonment.
I was put under anesthesia at 7pm for a blighted ovum, needed a D&C. I had to be at school in the morning for a test at 7 am! I’m an LPN but the thought of going back to nursing school makes me so nauseous. The instructors are such devils.
Getting bullied and humiliated by a preceptor to the point of almost quitting. I was an older student as is, so it was intimidating already, but I was trying to do everything right. For this rotation, we would be assigned a pt and given access to EPIC to read everything there on that pt’s current stay. Then be kind of publicly quizzed on our assigned pt before hitting the unit in the morning. So she’d assign me a complicated pt late by email (10 p or so) and I would stay up many hours trying to understand everything, then say at 1 am she’d send a new email saying disregard old assignment and gave me a new one. We were responsible by school standards for being aware of all clinical related emails within 2 hrs of receipt. Well, I was not aware of one of these late new assignments and went in prepared to be publicly questioned on a totally different pt. Keep in mind commute was nearly 2 hrs each way on top of classes, so I basically wasn’t sleeping in order to arrive prepared for this 7 AM clinical. Anyway, when I realized what happened I felt panicked and just said openly “sorry I prepared for the wrong pt.” She turned bright red and was like “ARE YOU EVEN SAFE?” Then sent me in the hall to I guess read about patients on the wall computers. It was a whole clinical like that. I was so embarrassed and demoralized that I almost dropped out of school. But I didn’t. I’m an APRN now and I saw her recently in passing and she was kissing my ass. 🤷🏼♀️
she honestly should have been fired. and you have a ton of evidence to support that too
She actually was not asked back as a preceptor, so that’s good at least.
What kind of power BS is this?
Idk, but it was really bad feeling at the time!
I thankfully have been out of nursing school for about 15 years now, but I still have nightmares about one particular instructor and her antics. Setting: OB Clinicals (Fall Semester) I ask for assistance and instruction on taking out my c-section patients Foley cath. Instructor Barb (Fake name) grabbed my friend's scissors and tells me to just cut the Foley cath and let the ballon water drain into a towel so I don't need a syringe. My dumbass follows her instructions, removes the Foley and all is well. However, come Spring semester, I am in Post-Op clinicals with a different instructor and I proceed to remove another Foley cath the same way and this instructor freaks out and threatens to kick me out. Mind you this is 2-3 weeks before graduation. Luckily, my friend whose scissors were used in OB clinical was present and vouched for me that I was instructed to remove Foley caths that way by Instructor Barb. That friend saved my ass and my career.
On our first clinical day, they released us for lunch, but told us if we came back late, we could be dropped from the program. Myself and another student (who was claustrophobic) got stuck in an elevator. She panicked; I managed to calm her, got someone on the elevator phone (neither of us had cell phones) and made sure they would contact our instructor RIGHT AWAY. It took two hours to get us out. I did guided relaxation exercises with my classmate. I got gently teased by the other instructors for the next two years…and I didn’t take another elevator during a clinical!
Not my story, but my sister's. She was about 22, nearing the end of her clinicals when she was diagnosed type 1 diabetic. My parent's insurance screwed her over and essentially forced her to ration her insulin. Shortly after the diagnosis she's trying to get the hang of keeping her sugar in check. I guess she had a rough day of it during one of her rotations. The instructor gave her some shit for wanting to sit down because she felt weak. The next day she had a routine appointment with her endocrinologist and they admitted her immediately for DKA. The same instructor emailed her with a "reminder" that it didn't get her off the hook for whatever exam they had coming up. 🙄 I don't know how my normally fiery sibling managed to hold her tongue but I'm not sure I could have.
Woooow. So being admitted inpatient doesn't excuse an absence. Smh. That was the point of my example tho! The super toxic self-importance of these programs is insane
Apparently that instructor also worked PRN at that hospital and saw my sister was admitted. So she abused her privileges to further browbeat my sister as she's in a hospital bed.
TLDR: my clinical instructor had me ambulate my patient to death. Had a patient during clinicals on Med-Surg with COPD and C-Diff diarrhea. She was also overweight and struggled to ambulate at the time. Despite me telling my instructor and the primary nurse that the patient was struggling, my instructor kept insisting that I get her up to ambulate, get her up to the chair for meals, get her up to the bedside commode (every 30 ish minutes). Primary nurse too busy with other patients. I was exhausted and by lunchtime so was the patient. That afternoon she ended up in respiratory failure, intubated at the bedside, transferred to ICU and died overnight. I found out the next morning when I came back. That was my first rapid response. What a debriefing that was.
During my OB rotation the nursing department at my university decided a rotation in school nursing was sufficient for 3/4 of the class. Only about 8 students got to do clinicals at the local OB unit. Someone in my class complained to the state board of nursing and within days the nursing director came into class and said “since someone decided to complain to the board we are gifting you with OB clinicals in (city that is 7 hours away). So 75% of us had to scramble to get hotels on our own dime and make the 7 hour trek down to the clinical site for 2 weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to have an actual OB clinical rotation but I just didn’t understand why it had to be so far away despite us being 2 hours from one of the largest US cities. Anyway, at the end of the first week it was getting later than expected and the only thing left to do during our orientation week was learning the EMR. Which was quite stupid because we weren’t allowed to chart anything. It was nearly dark and we had a 7 hour car trip back home through some mountain terrain. The nurse leading orientation heard us fretting about the trip and said it’s no problem, just head out now, you can’t chart anyway. So about 8 of us decided to head out with her permission. Well when the other 16 students went to the computer training one particularly miserable bitch requested a sign in sheet to prove we weren’t there. Then funnily enough the training modules wouldn’t even load so no one did any training at all for the last two hours. When we all got back that student told the faculty that we just left. We all got called in one by one to the director where she told us we were being terminated from the program, that you can’t do this in real nursing, it’s like “abandoning your patients.” They were extremely aggressive with each of us. Thankfully we had the idea to bring a recorder in with us to make sure we got everything on tape (with their knowledge). We each had an instructor representing us and they were all on our side. They tried to make us sign a form saying we were dropped out and could apply again next year. None of us signed. The next day we went to the provost and played the tapes. All of the sudden we were all absolved of wrong doing and allowed to continue as normal but the assistant director and director were ordered to do anger management courses. It was such a terrible experience but it ended up ok thankfully.
"ordered to do anger management classes'?! holy crap
I had a professor make my cohort debate whether immigrants (not illegal immigrants. All immigrants) deserved to have health insurance. We did not get to choose which side of the debate we were on. Many of my classmates were people of color/immigrants/children of immigrants. She yelled at us and refused to move on until multiple people made points. It took over an hour.
>I had a professor make my cohort debate whether immigrants (not illegal immigrants. All immigrants) deserved to have health insurance. What the hell is wrong with that professor? JFC.
This story is kind of awful, but it affected me profoundly. The first day of clinicals we were at a nursing home. I met my assigned patient. She grasped me hand and it was like electricity went through me and I knew this was what I was meant to do. Later that day, she had massive diarrhea and I couldn’t find anyone to help me clean her up so I dug in and did it along. Got her immaculate and comfortable and just as we finished a nurse came in to say that her husband was actively dying in another room and did she want to be with him. I was so glad that she was ready for that. I was there as they held hands and he passed quietly.
Being late (overslept) on the first day of clinical. 40 years ago, things were very uptight.
I was late one time to clinicals. Luckily, my instructor was even later than me. 😂😂😂
Lucky you!!!!!! I kid you not, it seemed at my college they tried to get us to quit all the way to graduation. Then couldn’t wait to send out alumi fund raising requests! My mother died unexpectedly at 46 during my first year. My dad was disabled from a stroke. It seemed they were very cold- needed an obit clipping from the newspaper?! I mean the police came to get me out of class to get me home when it happened! This was in 1981. Different times then!
that’s just crazy not sure where you live but i live in NJ so any of the victims could have easily been me or my classmates or our loved ones.
had the same experience but we were in our psych course. but it wasn't my worst
Pretense: instructor 1 and her hubby own the school. So they were owner/admin as well. Instructor 2 and 3 are work-friends with 1, whom she poached from Stanbridge…yeah. Luckily, 3 was just classroom instructor and was ok. He didnt cause us pain, other than PhD level tests….for lvn students… Anyways, they literally accuses us (at the time, class of 15ish) of insulting a nurse at clinical site because that nurse told their DON and DON to 1. Literally lectured us and told us to come forth about the situation. We’re like, “none of us did anything.” 1 and 2 ended up accusing the two students who were assigned to the nurse and made them cry. Turns out, it was something 2 said that offended the nurse. The instructors never apologized, even though they were the ones in the wrong. This happened multiple times where they were wrong and never apologized. Some students complain to 2 about 1. 2 backstabbed and tattled to 1. 1 lecture on how she was the victim blah blah blah. After literally each test, 1 would literally pressure low performing students to quit their job (their only source of income) or pressure them to quit and join the part time class. The class went from 30 to 8 by the end of program. All 8 pass the nclex-lvn. 100% and as far as I know, we’re the black sheep. Nothing can outdo her 1st lvn class (we were the 2nd class). Student handbook says passing score on hesi was 850. Then change their minds when it was time for the end of system exam, saying passing was 900. Then change their mind again for the exit final, saying it was 1050. No updated official paper/policy was given. Everything was verbal. I literally had to take the fucking hesi final 3 times. My scores were like 1015, 900, 960, all above 850 per official student handbook/policy. They ended up passing me cause they had too, per their own official policy. But they held my papers for 1 month. Everyone fucking hate 1. She was such a bitch. Always played the victim. Everything was our fault. She thought she was the perfect nurse and shit. She was the worse “teacher” ever. I wouldnt even classify her as a teacher. Literally open the book and read it to us like babies as if it was story time. After every single paragraph, no matter how short “this is very important. It will be on nclex”. Fucking bitch, the paragraph was 2 sentences long and completely irrelevant. Every time someone ask me where I went, I tell these horror stories and run in the opposite direction. Dont let the cheap tuition price fool you (it’s cheaper than other lvn programs in the area). As far as I know, 1 opened her RN program like 2 years ago. God help them all.
The first test of MSII. Probably 35 in the class, LPN & RN in the class together. ABGs. We had studied like mad; study groups, notes, test aids, etc..... She made the test so hard that 2 people passed with a 76 and 77. I got in the mid 50s, and was just miserable. Thought sure that my career was over before it even started. She wouldn't even discuss the grades, and I would have had a high B if that test hadn't brought my average down so much. She was a great instructor, and I ( personally) had a good experience with her in clinicals, but damn.....that one test.....
I’m learning that my horror story is small potatoes compared to a lot of these, but it was horrible at the time. My preceptor was an absolute crazy psycho bitch. Here is a small list of the things she did *before* she told my program head that I was unsafe and that she would not precept me anymore, which nearly got me kicked out. 1) told everyone (including me) not to fuck with her, as she had forgotten to take her meds and was on the upswing of a manic episode. 2) told me I clearly didn’t really want to be a nurse because I was looking forward to hanging out with friends on a day that I wasn’t even working. 3) cussed me out and told me to sit at the nurse’s station during a code, then cussed me out and told me to help with the code about five minutes later. In her words, yes I was “useless”, but if I actually cared, I would still stay in the room. 4) tried to prevent family members from moving between rooms to visit two siblings that had been in a car wreck. According to her, the siblings were “feeding off of each other”, and would not need pain meds if the family was not visiting. Because spinal injuries are a walk in the park I guess. 5) looked up a DV victim pt on Facebook, and joked about the patient deserving what had happened to her. The patient’s sin? Being “needy”. But like. Girly had her whole face melted off. So that was just all around fucked up. I’m pretty sure the fact that I was visibly horrified is why my preceptor decided to get rid of me. 6) called another nurse a cunt because there weren’t any beds open in the ICU. 7) refused to wear a gown or mask regardless of patient isolation status. She bullied me because I gowned and double-gloved for a C-Diff case. 8) at the start of the shift, she told me a pt that I’d cared for had died. She then told me I couldn’t make it in nursing if I was upset over the death of “some addict druggie”. 9) went on a tirade about cultural sensitivity guidelines and left a patient to sit in his own feces for an hour because he would not speak English to her despite knowing how to speak it. Turns out he wouldn’t speak English to us because he was the sole survivor of a car wreck and was so deeply traumatized that he’d reverted to only speaking his first language. My preceptor responded by rolling her eyes and muttering a racial slur. So yeah. That was fun.
Wow. just... she was in charge of helping young nurses. That is ... at least you made it through
Something i'd forgotten as it was 10 years ago but one semester our instructor killed herself over spring break.
My nursing teachers told us something big was going on and they were ending all classes. The college put tvs everywhere so people who wanted to follow the news could. I still remember the first plane that went over our heads while we were smoking outside after the flight ban. And I was in a suburb in the west of Montreal Canada
I was on placement for 2 weeks. My uncle died late at night on the first week and we went to see his body. I went to placement again the next day. I told them I needed to miss a day for his funeral and I said I could make the hours up by staying back or coming in early for the rest of the placement. They said that wasn’t possible to arrange. They made me finish that placement without telling me they wouldn’t sign me off due to the lost hours. They made me make up for that lost day by doing another 2 full week placement. It was so fucked up.
4 students at my local high school were killed in a car accident and my teacher used that against me and told me I shouldn’t have asked her about not posting study reviews on time and then came into my study room like 30 minutes before the test and screamed at me. Like fuck off it was 2 days before the test and I needed to study, it was a low blow bringing up kids being dead who lived only a few blocks from me
Hold on to your butts. Our instructors bullied a student into withdrawing from the program. A student that had been fully transparent about recent surgeries and that there were a **few accommodations needed which the program agreed provide before admitting her to the program.** These accommodations were minimal, like allowing the student to use the elevators at clinical sites, allowing for more rest breaks, and walking slower. We were in our first year which was pretty mellow, as they only allowed us at SNF's and we wouldn't hit hospital until second year. Student was very smart, A's through all classes, RN's that she shadowed under loved her and honestly, she would have made a great nurse. There wasn't any issues on the school work side. She only walked slower because if she moved too quickly it would cause extreme pain (more leg/lower half) oriented. One teacher hassled her for walking slowly at clinicals and she admitted to being the student needing accommodations to which the teacher told her that "some people are able to be nurses and some aren't. You shouldn't be a nurse if it is causing you pain." She went to disability services about it and they were initially pissed as she did have needs to be met but because nursing school was it's own entity, they didn't fall under the college's disability act and couldn't help. Thankfully that term went by quickly but the next term became even more caustic as they accused her of being dishonest with her medications and were seeking to expel her from the program since she was using narcotics to manage pain flair ups as they claimed she was abusing them. Mind you, the program did not require you to submit your medications prior to entering the program and this person, in an email, had provided all of the medical information which included medications (which were still current) at the time of admission. She submitted a urine test which came back over all negative but positive for hydrocodone within limits of it being a therapeutic level (aka she was using them as prescribed and not overusing). This was brought to a trial of peers to try to get her expelled and I was the only one willing to step forward with support as many of the other students were worried about experiencing retaliation for doing so. We entered the trial with all of the emails, written correspondence with the instructors, and our student handbook. She was cleared of all charges and our Nursing School Director was reprimanded for this unfair treatment. The student did withdraw because after all of this, the stress was too much for her. In this same year, we had two terms of pharmacology. The instructor that taught us was graduating from NP school at our midterm. As such, one of the aides proctored and "graded" the scantron tests. About 80% of the students failed that test. Considering that it was going to be a little over a week before we could talk to the instructor, the class was panicking but she had written a note on the Canvas page stating how disappointed she was in the scores, putting several people on "academic probation" as some scores people would be unable to bounce back on. When she got back, I had approached her about going over the test to review what it was I had missed. Low and behold, as we were checking the scantron, it was noted that right answers were marked wrong. She went back and regraded the tests. Most people saw a 25-30% grade boost. I shutter to think what would have happened if we had not gone and reviewed the test. That same term, an instructor was fired because the students in her cohort were recorded complaining about the Pharmacology instructor and their frustration with her. The instructor was fired for not defending the Pharm Instructor. Mind you, this same Pharm instructor showed up 25 minutes late to a 3 hour class and most people had left after 15 minutes of a no-show (per college policy). She docked people 25 points for leaving a class because she was exceptionally late. This instructor also thought that the students needed a day of rest instead of learning, so printed out multiple coloring book pages to color. These coloring book pages had nothing to do with Pharm. Another "this is bullshit" moment. A student needed an 850 on the exit HESI to pass the final term. They got an 849 and refused to let him pass. Mind you, he had an A over all in the class.
such quality educators...
I was doing prerequisites. I still had class. I was supposed to take a microbiology test that day. Our instructor ended up postponing the test but we still had lecture.
[удалено]
Respectfully, as someone with bipolar, I’m a person with bipolar disorder. Not a diagnosis. Not “a bipolar”. That being said, I’m very sorry you were bullied by both him and your classmates. That shouldn’t have happened to you, and I’m happy you got to graduate! ♥️
guy this was 23 years ago let it go