Hello everybody and welcome to season two of Nursing Student Coach . My name is Lauren Chapnick . I'm your host . I'm a registered nurse . Nursing is a second career for me and I found ways to thrive in nursing school and now as a new nurse in an emergency department .
I want to take this season to share my stories , experiences and lessons with you so that you can become the best nursing student and the best nurse , and really just the best version of yourself that you could possibly be . All episodes are 10 minutes or less , so you can grab it and go . And a couple more things before we get into today's show .
If you could kindly take a couple seconds to pull out your phone , give us a quick five star rating and review . It helps so much more than you even know to put the show in front of more future nurses , because it is my personal mission to help put more great nurses into the world and I need your help to do that . So thank you so much .
And lastly , the views and opinions expressed on Nursing Student Coach are those of Lauren Chapnick and hers alone . They are not intended as medical advice and should not replace your institution's policies or procedures . So guys on to today's podcast . It's the Nursing Student Coach giving you the strategies you need the most .
Hey everybody , today I want to talk about clinical . Now I did talk about clinical a few times in the first season . You spend about half your time of nursing school in clinical . So what I said in the first season and it still is true is that you have to be there anyway . So take full advantage of the time that you are there .
I've given this so much thought because I think , collectively , nursing students really see clinical as something they have to do and they dread it a lot of the time . They'd rather be studying for the exams , because the immediacy and the stakes are much higher for those exams .
Right , you're not going to fail clinical unless you seriously harm a patient or you don't go , but you're going to pass clinical basically by just being there , and you also know that you are not going to be a nurse tomorrow , so the stakes don't feel that high when you're at clinical .
I know because you kind of just think well , a lot of this I'm going to learn on the job anyway . So I got to do this , I got to be here , so I'm just going to get by , but really I'm just watching the clock ready to go home . I understand that . I was there not too long ago , I get it .
But I'm here to tell you from the other side , as a working nurse , you really need to take full advantage of every moment that you can absorb everything , do everything that you possibly can , skills wise , because once you are on your own , the minute that you pass that NCLEX and you have that license , you are legally able to do all of these things , and if
you've never done them before , it's going to be a lot harder for you . So first season I did an episode . I have a list of my top 10 ways to succeed in clinical and in the first season I did an episode where I went over two of them . They were arrive early and don't take unnecessary absences .
Now , during season two , I will eventually get through all of that top 10 list . But today we're going to hit another two on that list . The first is medications and the second is to volunteer for everything . So let me go through each of those . Okay , medications there is no better time to see and to learn your medications than in clinical .
If you have an opportunity to either go with your instructor or shadow a nurse who is giving medications , scanning them it's called the med pass doing your either morning meds or afternoon , whatever it is . If you're on a med search floor , go with them . Write down the name of the med , the brand and the generic .
In nursing school you're only learning the generic name , but doctors , providers , they all interchange the name , the brand and the generic , as do patients . So if you ask a patient what medications are you on and they say well , but you only know it as be appropriate , then you're going to be a little bit behind , whereas I challenge you to learn both .
File it somewhere in your brain so that you can recognize . You can start to recognize either or because in real life there's nursing school and NCLEX land right , and then there's real life . When you get to real life , the generic and the brand are interchangeable . So you kind of have to learn both , and I suggest doing it now .
Write down the names of all of the medications that you see each day at clinical , and the best way to do this is to team up with all of your classmates who are with you and collectively make a list . What did everybody else see ? You know this is something you can do on a break . Bring flashcards .
Write down the names of all the meds that you saw that day . What are they for , what do they do and what's their mechanism of action . What are the side effects ? Really flush out anything that you can about those drugs , because you will see them again and when you see them .
Working as a nurse like working in the emergency department I see a lot of these the same meds over and over again . But I will see all kinds of different medications because people come in for anything and everything and if your preceptor says , hey , why are we giving this ? Of course you can ask and you can look it up when you're there .
But if you have a bigger base level of knowledge going in , you're going to be so much better off , you're going to be so much more comfortable and you will feel far less overwhelmed by the medications . If you've taken the time in clinical to learn them as many as you can , you're there anyway . Guys , right , let's take advantage of that time .
Let's become the best future nurses that we can be and learn those meds when you're in the moment , because it will help you so much . Not only will it help you in nursing school as a nursing student , it will help you more than you even realize .
When you get out there as a working nurse , the second thing that I would advise you to do is to volunteer for everything . If your instructor says or a nurse says , hey , does anybody want to come put in this Foley for me ? Would anybody like to come do an NG tube ? You might be scared out of your pants .
I know I was the first time I ever did a Foley catheter . I was so scared . But here's the thing you are supervised . You are there with your instructor and or another licensed nurse and you're under their license . They are not going to let you hurt anybody . They're not going to let you mess it up .
They're going to talk you through each and every step and I guarantee you you're going to feel so empowered and so amazing that you worked through that fear and you said I am scared as heck to do this , but I'm going to put my hand up and I'm going to do it anyway .
And here's why the more skills that you have learned , that you have at least done once . You may not remember every step and you may not recall exactly what to do , but at least if you're not working as a new nurse and you've never done a Foley before . I don't know why I'm using that as an example .
But there's lots of different things NG tubes , maybe an enema , I don't know . Some of you may be able to start IVs in clinical . That's something you absolutely will learn on the job . But if you have the opportunity to try to start an IV , do it , because the best way to learn any of those skills is just by practicing them , by doing them .
My point is , guys , you have to be a clinical anyway . I know I've been there before . I know you just want it to be over . You just want to get home so you can study and do the things that are more pressing , that are more immediate .
But speaking from experience now as a working nurse , and I feel like I did take full advantage of clinical while I was in school , but there's always room for improvement . I could have always done more . I'm sure there were times where I just wanted to get home , where I had an opportunity and I didn't take it .
Take every opportunity , volunteer for everything , learn those medications . I hope you have a great clinical experience . I hope you love your instructor . I hope you love whatever institution you're at . I hope the nurses there are wanting to teach you and that you learn and get to talk to patients as much as you possibly can , and this is the time .
This is the time to get in there , get your hands dirty and practice . Until next time , guys . I hope you have an amazing day . I love you all and I will see you the next time . Bye-bye .