Hi all,

I'm getting ready to start my first clinical rotation and I'm curious if school reeeaallly prepares you for life as a professional nurse or if it's just like many other degrees where you don't truly know what you're doing until you have learned on the job. 

The reason I ask is because the program I'm in goes pretty fast (15 months) and I have some concerns about knowing enough when school is over. 

Also, are employers (specifically hospitals) supportive during that transition from student to professional nurse?  Is there a training period for new grads....or are you thrown out there from day one?

Please chime in with your experiences....especially those who have worked with new grads etc.

thanks

Learning is never enough in nursing school. Clinical rotations are not enough. I think that clinical rotations and simulation labs should consist of more hours. You read the chapters in the book but the real  world of nursing is different. Experience on the clinical site should be more.

I am an old diploma progam graduate (RN).  We spent 33 months in school.  No summers off (only 2 weeks), no winter break.  I started the program in september and was on the floor with my assignment of one patient in October.  We were in class from 8-4 Monday and Tuesday and 8-12 on wednesday.  then we were on t he floors the 2nd half of Wednesday, 7-3:30 on Thursday and Friday.  By the time the 33 months were over we had plenty of practical experience.  I spent 3 months at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in NY for Peds training, 3 months in psychiatric.  We also had blocks for orthopedics, ICU and surgery.  It's true, you will always be learning, and the best way to do that is not from a book.  I would look for a hospital that has a long orientation period.  it will make you feel more comfortable and more confident.  it is also my belief that it would be a benefit to ALL, if those who make decisions about nursing education would consider incorporating the Diploma School method with the various pre-requisites that seem to be so important today.  This might ultimately cut down on the need for long orientations.  the new nurse will feel prepared and confident on the day she graduates.

When I finished my EMT -1 program and went to work in an ED at a Medical Center, I felt that the study and work I put in were as nothing to the amount of knowledge I lacked...

When I started my first job as an LVN, I was somewhat put out that the education that I had paid dearly for had left me in a position of feeling extremely inadequate...

As I started my first RN position, I knew, in my head, that I would not know all I needed to know... but it still hurt, as that knowledge hadn't made it to my gut awareness, and my shiny new license that said RN was NOT ALL I NEEDED to do my work...

I think that the ANA has precipitated two situations with its determination to bring nursing education out of the hospitals and onto the campuses.  Not being in the hospitals for nearly long enough, (in San Diego County, for instance, there are so few clinical sites that they have to be handed out by a pseudo governmental consortium that merely adds another layer of MAJOR BS to the situation) many RN graduates are really lacking in the knowledge of more and more complex routines for admissions, assessments, discharges, getting diagnostic procedures ordered, etc...   AND....  the graduate nurses, being thus shorted on critical clinical experience, are competing for the few 'new grad' programs offered by the hospitals.... this creates a scenario in which there are many new nurses, with zero job experience, who will not be hired by HR departments asking for a 1 year minimum experience history; all this while there are 20+ RN slots (if not more) that are wanting filled, IN EVERY FACILITY!

Cure for nursing shortage?  Not the BSN that the ANA has in mind for all nurses (that STILL doesn't qualify as experience!)  No hospital wants to spend money on nurses that it might not be able to keep, so each trains only the minimum, or what it thinks it can afford.  This WILL NOT  enough new nurses into the hospitals, regardless of how much the schools increase the output of shiny new RNs.       The answer, just in time for the Obama bailout,  is Federal and State tax credits for hospitals to provide the clinical experience that new RNs need to be able to say, " I can do that!"  and that all hospitals can be reasonably certain of when they are interviewing a candidate.  If the payors (feds, staties) say "Do it!" it will get done, and not before....