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.

As a second year student nurse on a general medicine ward my mentor decided :

1. I wasn’t crushing the tablets nicely enough to give via NG, and that this was abuse
2. That any patients with a NEWs score shouldn’t be escalated, I should cure them first. I escalated a septic patient who ended up in ICU, which she reckoned I was very out of line to have done.
3. She told me one day I had put on weight since the last shift (the day before).

I was lucky to have two mentors and avoided her like the plague, I passed all placements with flying colours and am now a critical care nurse, 7 months qualified.

There’s shite nurses out there, shite mentors and shite situations

You can't know everything, that's what being is a student is about and I'm sure you did your best in a stressful situation. Don't be too hard on yourself.

The staff were probably panicking too, that's often a reason they get a bit snappy, you shouldnt have been involved if you hadn't even been shown where the emergency buzzer was, I bet half the staff didnt know what the right instruments were and if there were doctors there then wouldn't have known it was your first day. You might have a student support group at the hospital, are you a member of the RCN student group, just be a bit careful discussing work and patients on social media or with people you dont know. You will be fine, the patient was ok.

@Swimmingplatypus I work in that area & don’t be too hard on yourself, definitely learn from it but remember you’re a first year student.

You will definitely feel better once you’ve had some sleep.

My first emergency I was shaking afterwards & trying not to cry. & it taught me to learn procedures for different emergencies, who to call, what certain things are called & to just be honest when I don’t know or get someone who does.

It is hard & the amount of blood that can come out of people seems unreal sometimes but then you have a really good shift or see a baby born & it changes everything.

Doing last offices on a body of a person who had died with a C-Diff infection. He was leaking feaces and vomit. Everywhere.

@Swimmingplatypus

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

Ok, so it sounds like the woman had a PPH. This happens a lot, so you can now reflect on this and read up on PPH (if this is what happened) and how to deal with the situation and the medication and equipment to use.

Next time you’re on shift ask your mentor to show you were the PPH trolley is (for example) and ask her to show you were the emergency equipment is kept.

Also next time you’re in familiarise yourself with the room lay out. They’re generally all laid out the same. Emergency Buzzer on the back wall for example, and always keep the room tidy so if there’s an emergency people can get to the woman and the be without tripping up over bags, wires or other hazards on the floor.....

Had you just helped the woman out of bed? If so, next time put some incos on the floor, and make a trail of them to the bathroom if there’s one in the room. If not hold an inco between her legs. Always ask the woman to sit at the edge of the bed a moment before standing as they can also become dizzy and pass out when getting up.

You’ll see a lot of blood, but as you experience more you’ll be able to confidently recognise what is normal and what isn’t.

Also ask the MSW to show you how to clean the rooms, make the beds and how to assist women to the toilet/showers ect you’ll learn a lot from them.

Unfortunately there will be lots of eye rolling from staff, you’ll be asked lots of questions and quizzed on your knowledge, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry. But keep going.

Aww OP. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Being a student in those situations is hard and sometimes the most helpful you can be is either standing back and observing or being a scribe. My most traumatic event as a student involved a previous mentors grandson dying shortly after Birth. Nothing I or my current mentor could have done to prevent it but it was unexpected and really really knocked my confidence, sounds like the difference is I got lots of support after the event and it went on to make me a better midwife. Horrendous at the time though. And I shed so many tears and beat myself up so much.

Sorry just seen your update, try and stand to the side a bit so your not directly in the line of fire 😂

@Tagaagajavdv

As a second year student nurse on a general medicine ward my mentor decided :

1. I wasn’t crushing the tablets nicely enough to give via NG, and that this was abuse
2. That any patients with a NEWs score shouldn’t be escalated, I should cure them first. I escalated a septic patient who ended up in ICU, which she reckoned I was very out of line to have done.
3. She told me one day I had put on weight since the last shift (the day before).

I was lucky to have two mentors and avoided her like the plague, I passed all placements with flying colours and am now a critical care nurse, 7 months qualified.

There’s shite nurses out there, shite mentors and shite situations

Perfect post.

THIS is all you need to know and remember.

Highlights include:
-patient chasing me and my mentor into the office. Us having to close the door to keep them out and avoid being assaulted. 8A reported being unhappy with this and threatened to take the door off its hinged
-other staff calling me “student” or “white girl” (lm not even that white )

Sorry to hear about how your supervisor spoke up you

In hospital placements were mostly amazing and for 3 years had no problems,happy patients etc.However whilst on community placements which I mostly spent with my mentors,they used every opportunity to undermine my passion for the job and constantly bully me, mocking my accent,always trying to say something negative,never positive and if I did write something positive about my clinical practice,during the assessment I was told to stop ''singing my own praises''. shouting at me etc,obviously when we were away from the rest of the clinical team.I was asked to translate for the patients and my mentor used this opportunity to say soon after ''This is England and we speak English'' or ''I don't want to hear X language in my practice''.I had no idea what to do,no one wanted to help and I could not believe I work for the NHS who have posters and policies re:bullying in the workplace etc. practically everywhere.It was such a mixture of doing the job I absolutely adore and dealing with such an abuse of power that my mentors have exercised with their evil smiles.Still do not understand that those women who supposed to work for other women can be so vile and full of hate.I was
The girls in my cohort were amazing and it was still the best 3 years of my life but hospital experience was quite hard.I think I had really bad luck as other students had brilliant,supportive mentors.

I remember feeling foolish and mortified in 1976 when I was 26. I was a student on a male medical ward and a patient cajoled me into walking him to the loo as he said he was desperate and couldn't use a bed pan. I unclipped his ECG wires and waited outside the cubicle door. The lovely Charge Nurse found me and suggested I get a wheelchair. The patient had had a heart attack that morning and should have been on bedrest. I never forgot that Charge Nurse and his calm directions made more of an impact on me than if he had shouted. The next week a patient had kidney stones and we had to sift his urine. His friend brought in stones to put in his urine and fooled us all. Happy days.

My patient had cardiac bypass-lovely man and family. He was progressing well and the resident (doctor in training here in the US) removed the pacing wires-small cables loosely sutured in the heart for possible dysrhythmias common after surgery-makes it easy to hook up a defibrillator-rarely ever any issues but my patient suffered cardiac tamponade-when they pulled the wires he started bleeding in the sac surrounding his heart-he went into cardiac arrest and despite following emergency procedure he died. I'll never forget the traumatized family. Never had any issues with another patient after with that same procedure again. This happened 24 years ago in my senior year of nursing school.

I won’t be telling my worst experiences on here, far too upsetting. But what I will say is that you become a bit ‘hardened’ to things, and every experience should be a learning experience. You will learn what to do, or what not to do.
Keep going, it’s worth it 💐

@Swimmingplatypus

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

They should have given you a ward orientation which should have included where the emergency buzzers are. If your supervisor hasn’t done this that’s on them....not you being stupid.

Likewise have they shown you where various stuff is.....crash trolley, emergency trolley, pph drugs, etc? Even then I wouldn’t expect a first year to necessarily remember. I certainly wouldn’t expect a first year to know where in the stores room/cupboard instruments were kept.

Oh you poor thing. I will never forget my first placement, where there was a real culture of arrogance and dismissal towards students. I could have easily given up at that point, but I stuck with it, and never encountered such negative attitudes from so many staff again. It also made me a lot more sympathetic towards my future students, and my expectations of them.
I have had some terrifying situations, both as a student, and qualified, and my best suggestion is to talk it through with someone from the ward, or from the uni. You definitely need to debrief. But try not to feel bad. We all feel useless at times.

Op haven’t read the full thread but I’m a student nurse about to qualify. I’ve been mostly lucky in all of my placements but have been spoken to like a piece of dirt on someone’s shoe a few times but nurses/healthcare’s. A few friends of mine have had horrific experiences that border on bullying. Absolutely vile and I don’t know how some people think they can get away with it.

All I can say is stand up for yourself. A couple of times I have confronted staff there and then and challenged them (they always backed down) or I have taken someone aside and advised them I’m a student, I am there to learn and it is not acceptable for me to be treated like that.

Have a good nights sleep and hold your head eye, tomorrow is a new day and don’t let this ruin your training

I’ve just read what happened and I’ve been there, feeling absolutely useless and like a spare part. It’s such a horrible feeling but you are not alone, everyone has felt like that at some point. Next time you’re in maybe ask your mentor to go through it with you?

When I was on my A&E placement we had a young soldier bought in who had been accidentally shot in the head on a firing range , it was one of my worst days in 30+ years of nursing . You get those days , it’s nothing to do with being a student either , I had plenty of crap days when I was trained as well .

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32827840/
This is a friends paper on midwifery student bullying. Have a read. It may be helpful (sorry I can’t remember how to link using a single word)

@Footloosefancyfree

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 had a horrible mentor once. I couldn't do anything right. The other ward staff had all picked up on it though. And swapped me to a new one. But it really knocked My confidence for ages

@Swimmingplatypus

I hope you've had some better shifts

Lighthearted thing - taking foot dressings off for a gentleman being my admitted under the care of vascular for toe amputation secondary to diabetic foot issues... one of the toes came off with the dressing. I stood there like a goldfish staring at this toe whilst the surgeon was talking to the patient about the planned surgery. I have never been more mortified in all of my life!

Worst experience, definitely being bullied by a band 6 who made it her singular aim to demean me and torture me whilst I was in the ward. She even told me that she didn’t like me, and that if she had her way I would be failing my placement. My crime, being seriously allergic latex and to the hospital issued hand soap and alcohol gel so I had to bring my own with me and have latex free gloves - this made me weak and “useless”. That woman was an absolute cow to me.

@nocoolnamesleft

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.

I don't know why but that's very comforting. I've felt very helpless having tubes stuck into me in an emergency and it's nice to know doctors sometimes feel the same and it's okay.

I was ordered as a student nurse to give chest compressions to an old lady. When she died I cried and was told by my mentor to toughen up and stop being a wimpy bitch. The two placements before had been fantastic but this one broke me (lots of other stuff went one as well) and I quit