To be absolutely dreading work placement tomorrow because it's SO boring?

[Creoes]

I'm doing a nursing degree and am in my first year on my first placement. It's an outpatients department and I literally seem to just stand around for 10 hours doing sod all. It's SO boring. I'm not really doing any nursing at all, everything I'm doing a normal secretary could do. It's a case of shifting records from one drawer to the next for 10 hours straight. I look at my watch and it's 10am. I check again thinking at least half an hour must have passed only to see it's 10.05am. The days are SOOOOO long. I've stuck it out for 4 weeks now and only have 2 weeks left but I'm getting to the point where the thought of going in actually depresses me. I met up with a few uni friends last weekend and they're all really excited about their placements, have given injections, done dressings, looked after people - really nursey type stuff and it made me feel even worse. Yesterday I got there at 8am, nothing to do at all until 9am so I literally just stood there for an hour. From 9am until 12.30pm I simply stood collecting patient records from a box and adding them to a different pile, slowly losing the will to live. I had a half hour lunch break and then back to it - picking up papers, moving them onto other papers - bearing in mind that even THIS is few and far between, the majority of the time I'm literally just stood there WAITING for the bloody papers to arrive in the box for me to sort. I remember looking at my watch and it was 2.30pm and I thought to myself I just could not do that for another 3.5 hours. I really couldn't. It's mind numbing.
The staff are lovely and they have been trying to find things for me to do but even they struggle to find stuff to do. I'm due a 10 hour shift of it tomorrow and it's making me feel depressed jut thinking about it.
I only have 2 weeks left but it's going to be the longest two weeks of my life I think. AIBU to think this is an utterly shit first placement? I know I'm lucky to have got into uni etc in the first place but I am really struggling. One day I went into the toilet and played on my phone for 10 minutes as nobody was about and there was literally nothing to do. I came out after 10 minutes, still nobody about. I went back in and played on it for another 10 minutes - nobody even noticed I'd gone

One of my most satisfying days as an OPD nurse was the day that I managed to get an older lady accepted as a temporary patient at a relative's local GP surgery. It took a bit of doing, because she needed quite a lot of care and treatment from the surgery, but it was the difference between her having company at Christmas or not.

Yes, all I really did was make a phone call or two and write a care plan for the surgery, but what I actually did was giving an old lady an enjoyable Christmas with people who loved her, rather than an isolated Christmas on her own.

Well imam glad some others have come on here and feel the same as me...... Ie

Whine whine.... My placement is boring..... Whine whine why won't my mentor spoon feed me days out.... Boo hoo someone should notice how bored I am looking and feel sorry for me.....

Trouble is, a third of people who want to be a student nurse thinks it is like casualty/holby city (even A&E is full of boring old people with "social issues"), what is more about 70% of those who want to midwives think "because I've had a baby I will be great at this, and love ickle babies etc....."

I think out-patients is a perfect place to hone up on your people skills. As an ex out-patients receptionist who worked in close contact with the nurses, out-patients is one of those places that people get worked up about stuff (mainly waiting times) very quickly.And the nurses always worked non-stop, there was hardly any waiting about for them.I guess it depends wether you are working on a Medical, surgical, orthopaedic, gynae, ENT,Dermatology or psychaitry clinic. Not much to do on psych clinics, but medical is "weeing and weighing", orthopaedics and surgical quite often have medical procedures that need assistance, as does gynae,(and chaperoning is quite important). And no matter how well the notes have been checked clerically, there will always be a missing result somewhere along the line that needs chasing. And its up to the OPD nurses to make sure the clinics run smoothly for clinicians, isn't it?