Crushing Clinical: 3 Proven Tips for Nursing School Success

And we're going to do a lot of episodes about clinical , because it is half your time in nursing school at these clinicals and if you can get yourself in the right headspace for it and think of it as your playtime , then you're going to be right on the right track .

I have a top 10 list , a top 10 tips and strategies For success in clinical , and I'm going to talk about two of them today , and then I'm going to end with a clinical hack . That kind of came to me at some point during my clinical experience and so hopefully it can work for you . Hopefully something will resonate with you today .

So clinical really is such a gift . It is such an opportunity in nursing school To step into your future self and see what will this look like when I'm out there as a registered nurse . I have my license , what's it going to be like ? And you're a student , you're learning and you are just surrounded by all of these people who are there to help you learn .

Now , your clinical instructor is first and foremost the person who's there to help you learn , but you can learn something from every single person on those units , from the techs , the nursing assistants To the nurses , to the physical therapists that are there . You can just take advantage of so many opportunities .

So the first tip that I want to share is to be early , that is and these are in no particular order , but arriving early is huge . So most of these clinical experiences are going to be day shift , at least at my nursing school , I think .

You're not going to be on a night shift during a clinical , so you're going to be on a day shift and typically at a hospital at 7 to 7 . So you're going to be arriving either by 7 or , in our case , most of the time it was 645 .

And you'll have a designated meeting spot where you'll meet in the lobby or you'll meet in the parking lot , some designated spot . You want to be the first one there and not just the first day . You are starting your professional career . You are starting to meet professionals in your industry , starting with your clinical instructor .

Your clinical instructor is a working nurse . They could potentially be a connection for you , a network for you to land your first job or at least to give you a glowing reference . So it starts now . It starts your first day of clinical . You want to be the first one there and you want to start your professional career off on the right foot .

Trust me , you don't want to be that student who we're all waiting for because you know you're stuck in traffic for the 50th time . This person's always late . Do not have that reputation of the one who's always late . Trust me , you do not want that attached to your name .

You want to be the first one there and just start your day off right , even if you're 30 minutes early . Sit in your car , have your coffee , get yourself in the right headspace for the day . You don't want to be running out of your car with . You know , just got out of the shower and you're just hoping that you make it on time .

You want to start off right because you've got , you know , quite a day in front of you . You got to be mentally prepared . You want to be the one that your instructor knows Well , you know Lauren's going to be there on time , or Sarah's going to be there on time or whatever it is . That's , that's how you want to start off .

You do not want to be late , so plan your morning accordingly , so that you can plan to be early . Plan to always be at least 15 minutes early Because of course , things are going to happen . There's going to be accidents , there's going to be snow , rain , depending on where you live . There's going to be things that delay you from leaving your house sometimes .

But you have to plan so that you're early , so that if these things do come up , you're still going to be at least on time , and there really should be no excuse other than some crazy thing that's way out of your control . Maybe you're sitting there in two hours of traffic or something . You obviously can't help that .

But you have to plan , plan , plan , arrive early always , every single time . The next tip out of the 10 that I want to talk about today is unnecessary absences . Now , every school will be different on their absence policy . Some don't allow you to have any absences unless you have a doctor's note or , you know , a legitimate emergency .

Some schools allow you to have one unexcused absence . My school allowed you to have it , depended on which clinical it was . But one or two unexcused absences . I would say do not take unnecessary absences .

Do not call out of clinical because you don't feel like going , because what's going to happen or what could happen is that next week you could have a legitimate emergency and you've already used up your absence .

Or , you know , something happens , you get sick or whatever and you say , oh man , I shouldn't have just taken that last week because I was feeling lazy and didn't want to get out of bed . Don't take unnecessary absences . Trust me , you want to be there to take advantage of the opportunity that's in front of you .

Plus , I'm telling you and I'm just going to be real , most days you're not going to feel like going , but that's true with a lot of things in life . A lot of things you don't feel like doing it , but once you get out of bed and or once you get there , you're so happy that you went because you could miss out on some amazing opportunity .

You could miss this amazing experience with a patient , or maybe you'll get to witness a procedure , maybe you'll get to go to the operating room on a certain day . I remember during my maternity clinical I got to see an emergency C section of twins .

Can you imagine if I had said , eh , I don't really feel like going and I think my instructor's cool , I'll just , I'll just stay in bed today and watch Netflix , but then I would have missed out on this incredible opportunity . I will never forget that I saw twins being born out of a woman's uterus right in front of my eyes , like hello , that was amazing .

That was incredible . So don't miss those opportunities . I guarantee you , the days you don't feel like going are going to be the best days . Something's going to happen , something's going to click in . Clinical you might get to do . Maybe a lot of people are absent on a certain day . Those are the best days .

When it's three of you , let's say , there's eight people in your group and five people are out , because this always happens . There's a big exam , right , and so people use their absence to to miss the day before an exam , something like that . What an opportunity to get such one-on-one time with your instructor . You'll .

You'll get , you know , so much one-on-one attention . So do not use your absences unnecessarily . Go every time . Be that . Be the goody two shoes who has perfect attendance , because you know what You're going to be a better nurse for it . That's who I want . That's who I want to be working with . I want to work with the person who wants to be there .

I want to work with the person who gets out of bed and says , heck , yeah , I'm here , I am ready , and that's also who I want taking care of my loved ones . Do you think you want the lazy person who just didn't feel like going or is going , and just you can also go and be mentally checked out , and you may as well not have gone .

Don't sit there on your butt and scroll through your phone and say , oh , this is so boring . I could be home studying right now . Uh , look around you , open your eyes and look , you are on a hospital floor . There is no such thing as a boring hospital floor .

You could ask to go into the medication room with one of the nurses and just look at some of the names of the medications . If nothing is going on , you could say , hey , can I , can I just follow you ? You don't have to teach me anything , I just want to watch . Who's going to say no to that ? Who's going to say no to somebody who wants to learn ?

And , at the very least , follow a CNA , follow a tech . They have the most one-on-one patient interaction . They might . They may not be giving meds , but you can help with so many things . You can help ambulate a patient , you can help move a patient .

Anyway , I will step off my soapbox for the for the moment , because I want to talk about this nursing school clinical hack that I kind of came up with one day . My imagination just kind of goes sometimes and I like to just put myself into a really good headspace .

So I'll just say , when I started nursing school I was pretty gung-ho that I wanted to do maternity , I wanted to do labor and delivery or mother baby , and who knows , maybe someday I will end up on one of those floors I'm actually starting in the emergency room , but we'll , we'll get to that another time .

So I was I wouldn't say I had tunnel vision , but that's kind of what I was thinking on all of my clinicals , that well , I'm going to be doing maternity , so I I'm just really going to pay attention to that clinical and all the other clinicals , so what ?

But I quickly realized , no , that's , that is definitely not the way that I should approach this , because I could close myself off to some opportunity that I hadn't even considered yet .

I mean , really , I know nothing . I know nothing . I've never worked as a nurse before . I don't know what all these specialties are . So you know what I'm going to do . Before I walk into any clinical site every single day , I'm going to just say to myself this is where I work .

I am a nurse on this stroke unit or this med search floor or this psych adolescent unit . This is my job and I work here and I love it . I am a psych nurse , I am a med search nurse . Just role play . Just put yourself in that position for that day , because here's the thing . I can say this all the time . You have to be there anyway .

So just go with it . Just go with it . Keep an open mind . If you think , no , I want to be a NICU nurse . That's all I want to do . So none of this stuff matters . You may have a moment , you may have some epiphany that just hits you out of nowhere , that just you do a 180 and you say you know what I really ?

I thought I wanted this , but now I want this Perfect example . One of my good friends thought she wanted labor and delivery as well , and she saw a birth and she said nope , I don't want to do that anymore , and now she is going to be working in psych . So you just don't know .

You cannot know until you're there , and so you might as well try on all of these different specialties . You might as well just try it on and just see . Put yourself into that zone . For me , what ended up happening was , of course , I and this is a problem , and it's not really a problem . I always say this is my problem is that I love everything .

I really genuinely loved every single clinical rotation , just because I learned so much on every single floor and I was just so grateful to be there . So , but what ended up happening was , of course , I loved my maternity , I loved my labor and delivery and I could see myself being happy there . I could see myself being happy at a lot of different units .

But what caught me by surprise and this is where this hack really worked is day one of my psych rotation psychiatric nursing . I did not see myself liking it , I didn't think I would like psych . And day one I was hit out of nowhere , completely unexpected .

I connected with a patient who was six years old same age as my daughter and at the time and I just had such a moment of wow , there's this whole other world of nursing here and I could really see myself doing this . And I fell in love with psych and for those seven weeks I thought what would my life look like as a psych nurse ?

And I really debated when it came time to search for jobs to start on psych , because I really see myself working psych at some point . But for me my personal decision was I'm not going to start there .

I might go there , but if I had closed myself off and I saw other people closing themselves off and not talking to the patients and not fully immersing themselves in the day to day of the unit and just kind of sitting on the sidelines and they missed out . They missed out on an opportunity that could have changed their life .

And that same thing could happen to you . You may not even be considering a certain specialty let's say pediatrics , whatever it is and then you go on the floor with an open mind , just do it , just pour yourself into it and think could I do this ? You might be shocked at how much you love a particular specialty . So that's my hack .

Those are my tips for the day Clinical . I have so many more . We're just going to keep talking about clinical , and later on this week we're going to talk to a clinical professor and hopefully we can learn a lot from this person as well . But anyway , I would just like to thank you so much for listening today .

Again , it is my personal mission to help put more great nurses into the world . You could follow us on all the social media channels Instagram , tiktok , facebook , linkedin . The handle is at nursing student coach and , just as a reminder , maybe you know , maybe you don't know , you can watch this podcast on YouTube .

Maybe you are , or you can listen , so sometimes you may want to watch and sometimes you may want to listen to it on a drive , so you have both options . So just wanted to let you know that . Thank you so much . Make it a great day . You guys . Be early to clinical and don't take unnecessary absences . Keep an open mind .

I love you all and I'll see you soon . Bye-bye .