Tell me your worst experiences as a student midwife/nurse

[Swimmingplatypus]

Had a majorly traumatic experience yesterday and have been in such a depressive slump since. Not slept properly and am dreading going back in for a long day tomorrow
I’m surprised as how absolutely useless I was, more of a hindrance than help! Please make me feel better.

Gosh, lots. Can’t remember specific stuff as was so long ago. But do talk to your supervisor and tell them how you’re feeling, hopefully they can talk you through it.

I would have spoken to her but she was quite horrible to me (understandably, it was a really stressful situation). I am a first year and this was my first time in this particular environment so I had no idea where anything was, and it was an emergency so no one had time to run through anything! I just feel so awful today.

Ah you sound really down. I'm sorry you've had this difficult experience. Please remember though that your role as a student is NOT to help, it's to LEARN, and we can all feel a bit useless when we're learning. Don't be too hard on yourself, chin up and keep going.

Emptying a catheter bag full of infected urine all over my foot on my first ward placement was a low point, particularly as I couldn't change my shoes or stockings afterwards.

I also got into trouble for buying whisky and cigarettes for an elderly Catholic priest - he asked me to run him an errand - and he was caught smoking in the toilet.

Whatever has happened, nobody will care, hospitals are busy places and all manner of things happen. Don't sweat it. They'll have seen worse.

OP, please be kind to yourself, you were in a very stressful situation that you weren’t prepared for, in any way
Your supervisor should not have been horrible, hopefully she’ll reflect on this
One day, you’ll use this experience to guide others, empathically, until then, try not to beat yourself up

No one with an ounce of sense would expect a student to know where things are, particularly if they've never been in that environment before.

I'm an RMN and I got knocked out by a patient, clean punch on the chin.
It was horrible experience but I learnt from it an moved on.

You have only just started your placements, the ward should show you around, you are supernumery and not expected to know where things are kept if no one has shown you. Dont be hard on yourself, even experienced staff feel out of their depth sometimes especially in new situations. Have you been given a mentor, talk to the mentor, ward manager or your tutor if you still feel down. A good ward manager or nurse in charge would have supported the staff and given some sort of debrief after a traumatic event. Be proud that you obviously care, nursing is a tough old job but you have nothing to feel bad about. If the nurse has any sense they could have given you a simple task to go and busy yourself with or just suggest you stand back and observe I'd you wanted to.

It’s not understandable that she spoke horribly to you. It’s unacceptable, nobody should speak horribly to anyone. Can you ring your link lecturer/personal tutor next week? Just have a chat.

I remember my placements well, nothing worse than getting a horrible mentor and horrible placement. Your there to observe in Year 1 not to assist with an emergency that's what the qualified staff are for.

I'm a HCP: I'd advise you to get a good night's sleep tonight, and go off to your shift in the morning in a positive frame of mind.
Tomorrow's a new day, and you'll probably be too busy to be dwelling on previous shifts.
Things just move on; that's how it is.

I'm a student Nurse...and my first hospital placement was in MAU, which was a very chaotic ward. I asked a HCSW to help me take a patient to the toilet, a few steps in he collapsed on us and I thought he was going to die. He didn't.

Year 1 are meant to observe I think, but I had to look after a bay one day alone due to staff sickness, and was left to my own a lot. Student Nurses (and I'm sure Midwives) do not get enough credit, I don't mean to sound arrogant, because I'm just not, but there were plenty times on that ward I wondered what would happen if I wasn't there! StN are also so keen to please and do well, we haven't been ground down yet, they're always so helpful.

Don't let what happened get you down, chalk it down to experience. You can do it!

I find writing a reflection helps. Just writing what happened, how you felt, and how you would react if it happened again.
I think it helps to work it through in your head, and it will also be helpful to show to your personal tutor, so you can speak to them about it.
Don't forget you are only in your first year, it does get better. I'm 7 years qualified and I still have days where I feel out of my depth.

Whatever happened, it was not your fault,. At this stage of your training you are there to observe, your mentor is supposed to be supporting you and should have given you the opportunity to express your feelings and to help you put things in perspective. I was a mentor to many first year students, and always told them to relax and enjoy their placements. If something upsetting happened, it’s all good experience, which we would reflect upon afterwards. Please talk to your tutor and don’t let this negative experience play on your mind. Having a horrible mentor is hard, but you’ll have others who will be lovely.
Good luck with your course. Things will get better.

Hi OP, I'm a police officer and not a nurse but I imagine the traumatic experiences and feelings of helplessness are similar at the beginning!

Just remember that everyone has been new and in your shoes, including your supervisor. You'll gradually build your confidence and knowledge and before you know it you'll be the one people look to in a situation! It's a good sign you're reflecting on things. Don't be too hard on yourself

As a student nurse on a ward many years ago we had an elderly man pass away. The ward sister tried for hours to contact his family, to no avail. She eventually took me with her to 'lay him out' just before visiting time, behind the curtain in the four bedded bay. He'd. led there for some time and had to be transferred to the morgue.
We were mid rolling and putting him in a shroud when a female visitor pulled back the curtain and asked 'is that my dad?'
The sister took charge. Completely awful.
Watching electroconvulsive therapy in the early 1990's carried out to a patient strapped down in a hospital for the mentally ill, was also memorable.

There are too many to recall. However the good shifts/experience always outweighed the most difficult.
Even post qualifying you have those moments. It's how you deal with them and continue that counts.
Tomorrow is another shift, reflect, learn and move on.
Do not waste energy beating yourself up.

Talk through it with your personal tutor. If a nurse has enough experience to be a mentor then they should be capable of staying calm in an emergency, this isn't your failing.

One thing I really would advise as you go through training is to ensure this experience doesn't get the better of you. If there is an emergency observe how a calm nurse handles it. Find someone kinder on a quiet shift to go through emergency items and procedures with you, night shifts are great for this.

Every student I've ever mentored was an expert in finding things in the arrest trolley after a week of nights.

Be kind to yourself, this wasn't your fault.

@Swimmingplatypus

Had a majorly traumatic experience yesterday and have been in such a depressive slump since. Not slept properly and am dreading going back in for a long day tomorrow I’m surprised as how absolutely useless I was, more of a hindrance than help! Please make me feel better.

If you’re a student midwife, unfortunately there’s a lot of expectations even for first year students, and you will see a lot of scary stuff (but you will get use to it). The best advice I can give is to reflect on it and do some reading to build up your confidence and resilience, and talk to your peers and tutors.

In an emergency situation the expectation is generally that students take notes so they can be written up later and to pass/get/give the equipment that the midwives/doctors need, whilst also supporting the woman and her partner.

So for example:
20.40 emergency buzzer pulled woman assisted onto bed (senior staff will then run into the room)
20.41 RM hairy, Dr warts, MSW hairy warts and enters room.
20.42 Dr Warts does x y and z

Carry on writing the times and what happens until the emergency is dealt with and you can go back to the paper/electronic notes.

It is not ok that she wasn't nice to you, your there to learn. She will probably have a convo next time with you and explain it all in depth and she should be asking how your feeling after the traumatic experience. Nursing and midwifery degrees are so so hard but you can do it. Once qualified it will be a distant memory. It's surprising how much you will actually learn from these traumatic experiences x

Also by writing the events down and reflecting on the situation it will allow you to ask questions and prepare you to deal with the situation better next time. It can act as your own debrief as what you will see is scary, and due to workload unless it’s a quiet shift, or you work with the same midwife again you may find you don’t get the opportunity on that day to ask questions about what happened.

It is so hard being a student midwife. Agree with others that it is not acceptable for anyone to be rude to you. And she should have debriefed you at the end of your shift.

I sometimes find writing the experience/situation down, with as much detail as possible, helps my brain to process and switch off from whatever shit situation I've experienced.

As a student I was shouted at for being too casual when fetching someone to get ergot for a PPH. I had no idea what it was, had no idea it was a PPH ( it always looked like too much blood at that point in my training!).

Without going into too much detail, it involved a lot of blood. We were both covered in it, it was all over the floor to the point If I hadn’t of been wearing anti slip shoes I would have definitely gone flying! They were asking me to grab instruments, I had no idea where they were. Asked me to pull the emergency bell, I had no idea where it was. It was awful. I felt so useless. I found it eventually and everything turned out ok but I just feel like such a fucking idiot. I’m so confident in other aspects but this was literally my first experience in this area. I could tell they thought I was useless by the way they spoke to me after

@FakeTanandProsecco exactly like this, but actually during before the baby was even out! And it happened so quickly. I will definitely speak to my personal assistant tutor for a debrief but she’s on annual leave until the end of next week. Every time I think about it I start crying. It doesn’t help that I’m about to come on my period so I’m way more sensitive

One of the things we all need to remember is that we are human beings first, and health care professionals second. It is normal to find things upsetting. It is normal to struggle not to take stuff home with you. It is normal to have some experiences that live with you. We see stuff, experience situations, which are stressful, and can be upsetting. It's actually really healthy of you to be reflecting on how it made you feel, rather than just bottling it up.

You're a student. You're there to learn, that is your purpose. And there will be times when you feel useless: we've all been there. But from each experience you will learn. And that learning will help you to know more what to do, and how to cope the next time.

I've been a doctor over 20 years. And yet there are still times that I feel useless and helpless. Because sometimes we are faced by awful situations, and sometimes what we can do is very limited. There are still times that events get to me. And do you know what, I'm glad they do. The day a tragedy no longer gets to me I'm leaving. Because, like you, I'm a human being first.