With the current challenges facing healthcare and the world, we want to shine a light on the students and new nurses who are coming into the field during this unprecedented time.
We hope to raise awareness of their situations and help to amplify what needs to be done to ensure that nurses feel comfortable and supported in the healthcare field.
Situations cannot change with truth. We hope their stories will resonate with you and can create change within the field of nursing.
In the seventh video of our series, we ask the students, if they had one piece of advice for experienced nurses on supporting nursing students or new graduates what would that be?
[Transcript]
Olivia
I think the biggest thing that experienced nurses know about nursing students, I think coming in, you know, we just want to soak everything up that we possibly can. But that being said, I think at least most nursing students I know just lacks so much confidence. And it's being able to have those experiences. But also just being told that you're doing a good job just goes such a long way.
I think, you know, you make complete something and, you know, maybe it's something you struggled with, and being told like that, you did it not terribly. But kind of reprimanding you for what you did doesn't help anyone. And just being guided and showed how to do it the right way or being told that you did a really good job just makes you feel so much better about what you did, even if it's the simplest of tasks.
So just, you know, constantly building each other up and having those students gain that confidence and what they're doing and just it just goes such a long way.
Caroline
So one piece of advice I'd give to experienced nurses on how to support newer student nurses, or just pass the NCLEX nurses, would just to be really nice and inviting. I think a lot of younger nurses have the idea in their head that older nurses, like "eat their young", like that whole idea that they aren't going to be nice, they're going to be someone who's very difficult to deal with on top of everything else.
You have to do that day. And I think it's really helpful to have a strong sense of like teamwork and collaborative health care approach, I guess, because I think that especially when you start out in your nursing student or just a new grad, you really don't know what to do in a lot of situations, or you just don't know how to use this machine or you don't know why this is beeping because it's never been like that before.
There's a lot of things that you just have to learn by doing, and if there's no one to kind of help you through that or just be nice while they're doing it, it makes the whole experience much more negative.
Fernanda
We definitely be reliability. A new grad, and I've trained many nurses coming onto the field and I remember vividly when I became a nurse, you know. But what really helps, what would really help is for that nurse, for that preceptor to be reliable. That new nurse, they need to know, and it helps them a lot to know that there is that person there when they need most, you know, because it's very scary.
Scary going into nursing alone. It's very scary. These are people that people's lives you have on your hands and you need to feel like if there is something happens, if there is a problem, that there is that coworker of yours, there's that nurse, there's that preceptor there that's going to come and help you, you know? And then there's also that person that you can go to if you have questions, because there are a lot of questions.
New nurses will have a lot of questions. It's just natural to have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions. You know, sometimes they're things I don't know. They're things I have not seen yet. Believe it or not. And it's good to know that there is that one coworker, there's that one there is that one preceptor that you can you can go to and feel comfortable going to.
It's going to help you. That's going to you know, that's going to get you through.