LPN Clinical Experiences

[RNmom08]

Would some of the LPN nursing students mind sharing their clinical experiences?

The school I attend seems to focus so much on the nurses aide portion. I have nothing against nursing assistants or the work required (and no, I don't think I am too good). However, I am not going to school to become a nursing assistant. It is just that even if an opportunity came up for me to learn something I am too wrapped up in caring for my patient to leave him/her.

I have been in clinicals for several months and I have only passed meds (with supervision), a couple of finger sticks, one shot and suctioned a tracheostomy. Is this usual? Am I expecting too much?
I am just worried that once I am finished with school that I won't be prepared.

Thanks

[raidacu2]

hi i understand what you are saying i am in the nursing 101 and all we do in clinicals is pass med and do vitals i really have not seen the good experience stuff yey and i also feel that i am not learnig the material as we should

[LPNtoRNstudent]

Originally Posted by RNmom08

Would some of the LPN nursing students mind sharing their clinical experiences?

The school I attend seems to focus so much on the nurses aide portion. I have nothing against nursing assistants or the work required (and no, I don't think I am too good). However, I am not going to school to become a nursing assistant. It is just that even if an opportunity came up for me to learn something I am too wrapped up in caring for my patient to leave him/her.

I have been in clinicals for several months and I have only passed meds (with supervision), a couple of finger sticks, one shot and suctioned a tracheostomy. Is this usual? Am I expecting too much?
I am just worried that once I am finished with school that I won't be prepared.

Thanks

Don't worry about how well of a nurse you will be when you get out of school. Clinical is a huge part of nursing school, but the bedside manner and quality care that an LPN gives is the biggest part. As long as you know your book work and know the difference between right and wrong you will have no problem adjusting and the fact that you will be under going training by your employer after getting a job makes it much easier...they're not going to just let new nurses run around and do everything for themselves. They do however expect you to be able to give injections, IVs(in some states), and know how to treat the patient and the patients families.

OK, in my school I got to go to about 12 different clinical sites. We had a mental health place we went to, 2 nursing homes, 2 different hospitals, oncology, dialysis, 4 doctors offices, and 2 different health departments.
Our school was tiny, but we were able to manage to have a variety of places to go and to learn. I did a lot of procedures and had the opportunity to teach the patients how to do the procedures and have them in return show me that they understood how to change the colostomy bag, or change a packed bandage on their baby that had MRSA.....I liked the fact that I could stand in their room and talk to them and get to know them and help them at the same time.
There were people in our class that took that for granted and would actually leave their patients to go do procedures on other people because they were scared if they didn't they wouldn't know what to do when they got out of school. They missed the biggest part of being an LPN, the bed side manner. I never ran from room to room but ended up doing a lot more different procedures than most of the students in our class because I stayed with my patients and if my patients were discharged I went and asked if I could help with other patients. Some just hid out or followed another student around and watched them.
We all did IVs, but no IV pushes we were able to flush with normal saline, watched surgery's, worked up patients in the ER, gave plenty of injections ALL SUPERVISED except for outside the hospital/nursing homes....all meds were given supervised and we had to tell our instructors what we were giving our patients and why. We also were able to chart but we first had to write it out on a piece of paper before hand and get approval from our instructor. I only got to do that a few times in med surg. Those are their licenses you work under, that is why that is supervised....anyway....Xray department, out patient surgery, and ICU....all of this was in one of the hospitals while in med surg.
When we went into OB and PEDs everything changed....was not allowed to do head to toe assessments on pre laboring, laboring or post laboring women, were not allowed to give them meds at all, the babies we were able to do head to toe assessments on them...if they were not on monitors. We were able to give them the erythromycin in the eyes and their Vitamin K shot and their Hep B shot, but only a few of us got that opportunity. I myself only got to give a Hep B shot. I mostly did teaching and tried to coach some of the laboring mothers. I never got to see a baby be born vaginally. I was the only one in the class that didn't, but I have seen babies born before, so no big deal. I did get to do caths and I observed two C sections, one while in med surg and the other in OB. The one in OB was my favorite...the doctor was awesome and did an out standing job and explained everything that I saw. The veins and arteries were WOW at that point I understood what the book reading meant when it read that the blood volume increases by 50% while pregnant. We did narrative charting while in med surg and then the computerized charting in Peds...no charting in OB they were weird about what we could and couldn't do. I did however, finally get the hang of care plans by the time I got to OB and Peds.....funny because we only had to do like 4 the whole time we were in med surg.
I loved clinical...didn't love getting up at 4 am every morning twice a week or the three times a week if I was at a doctors office, but I learned a lot. Regardless, as an LPN or as an RN if you work in a hospital and your patient needs a bath or a change right then and right there it is your duty to clean them up, not the CNAs. They are there to assist and in most cases there are not enough of them. I've talked to people that went right in for their RN and wasn't expecting what they got when it come time to go to work. They are more about delegating, but they also can't delegate to a busy LPN or a busy CNA that their patient has used the bathroom on himself and go change him for her....only a dumb one would drop what they were doing to go do that. They would be ran all over and never get their own patients taken care of. You as a nurse will always do CNA work and will do patient care and dispense medications....and even more depending on where you work and that hospitals policies. There are some charge nurses that are LPNs they are seasoned, but there are some. Enjoy the time you have in clinical and soak up what you can, but always know that your mission is to give the best quality care you can to all of your patients...no matter if they cuss you out or are the nicest people ever and never judge or assume anything...you don't know their situation.
Which reminds me I did see one of the girls get cussed out and she about lost it and said something rude to her patients family member and walked off before she said more......she was one of the students that was not involved so much with her patients. She was probably the worse of all, running off leaving her patients to do procedures on other patients. She never learned how to deal with patients on a one to one basis....or how to communicate with them or their families properly. She had one calling her Doctor, because she was bossy toward him and he was in sickle cell crisis! She told him to shut up when he called her doctor....my mouth dropped and he looked at me and said you saw it and you heard her. She said you know I'm just playin'. I felt sorry for the guy and started going in and helping take care of him while she was off doing procedures on other people.

Enjoy your time like I said and soak up everything you can, except the bad stuff.....if you have been in clinical for a while you know what I mean....bad habits made by seasoned nurses and handed down to new nurses.
Good luck to all!

D

[Viresh12]

Thank you for sharing your LPN experience it was really nice their are lots of up down in work which LPN does.

[coffeesloppe]

I am a lpn student we have also basically followed aides around but am now going to hosp med surg for clinical!

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