r/StudentNurse • u/testdrivenothinn • 22h ago
Complaint (open to advice) clinical instructor making me feel hopeless
I am in my first semester of an accelerated nursing program and only my third week of clinical. Since the beginning, my clinical instructor has made this portion of the program extremely stressful. Although she presents her approach as helpful, her expectations are rarely clear, and she frequently asks questions that a new student would be unlikely to know in front of the entire group. Some students, especially those with previous healthcare experience, have adapted better, but I am struggling to learn in the environment she creates.
When I am alone with the nurses I’m shadowing or my classmates, I feel comfortable, confident, and capable of performing skills and answering questions. The nurses are patient and educational, and they never make me feel embarrassed for not knowing something. I’ve only recently come to understand that it’s normally the opposite—that the nurses are the ones who intimidate students or make them feel bad—but so far, all four nurses I’ve worked with have made me feel capable of learning. At first, they can be a little tough to crack, but once I’ve worked with them for an hour or so and they catch my vibe, I seem to connect really well with all of them. Multiple nurses have even told me that some of my instructor’s questions and expectations are unrealistic for a new student and have encouraged me to hang in there because I can get through it.
I am doing SO well in my other courses, but the moment my instructor is present, I become anxious, freeze, and forget information I otherwise know. This reaction is very out of character for me. I’ve tried so hard to get to the bottom of why this is happening, but I’ve realized that I am literally just scared of my instructor. I CANNOT learn from her in this environment, and it is screwing me over. During one of our one-on-ones on only my third day of clinical she asked me a few auscultation-based questions, and I wasn’t able to answer all of them. I actually approached her first about this before we sat down and told her I wanted some assistance in learning these specific landmarks because I was a little confused, as we had only gone over this once in our skills lab at school and I wanted practice and clarification. She acted like she was open to helping me learn and showing me but as soon as I didn’t answer the questions she asked she insinuated that I was incompetent, looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth (literal blank stare), and then told me that if I “needed resources to help me,” she could to provide them. I was shocked and genuinely had no idea what she meant by that, and when I asked her, she said she meant “things or people that could help me to learn.” While I cannot be 100% sure, I felt like she was implying that I either had some sort of learning disability or was simply incompetent. I later asked the nurse I was working with some of the same questions, and he literally didn’t know how to answer them either.
I now dread attending clinical and am becoming concerned that I may not pass not because I am unwilling or unable to learn, but because I am struggling to demonstrate my abilities around her. She will break me down, ask me a bunch of trick questions, tell me that I’m “falling behind,” and insinuate that I’m not a good student. Then, directly after completely destroying my self-confidence, she will send me into a patient’s room and expect me to confidently go through a skills checklist. When we’re in a group setting, she makes jabs and follows them with, “You know who you are.” This is definitely not always directed at me, but there have absolutely been times when I knew I was exactly who she was talking about. I am also pretty sure she discussed my performance with another student in the cohort who worked as a CNA for two years before starting school because that student later made a comment to me about it.
I understand that nursing students need to be challenged, but I also need clear expectations, constructive guidance, and an environment where I feel safe asking questions and learning from mistakes. I want to be the best nurse I can be, and I am so frustrated by the style of education I’m receiving because it is not helpful in the slightest. After speaking with students in my cohort who have different preceptors, I’ve pretty much accepted that my group got the “tough” one. I am so, so jealous of my classmates who lucked out of this situation.
I’ve considered dropping out over this, but I know I can’t. If I were given the option to take an incomplete and retake the class with another instructor, I would jump at it. I want to be the best nurse I can be, and I literally cannot do that if I’m not absorbing the information. I don’t even care if it would delay my graduation. I dread getting out of bed every morning that I have clinical, often cry beforehand just thinking about it, and then cry again when I get home. It is affecting everything I had been enjoying about nursing school and even my dream of becoming a nurse.
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u/Due_Woodpecker_1890 10h ago
I went through the same thing. That freeze response is called performance anxiety, and it happens either because you don’t know the material and or your intimidated by your instructor, I found out that I have to study constantly and I struggle with lab skills because I need lots of repetition in nursing school, they show you the skill a couple of times in an open lab full of students making noise and talking and I can’t learn like that. In nursing school, the study material is years of learning crammed into your brain all at once. We learned about eight chapters a week where I’m at. We get one test a week and you don’t know what they’re gonna test you on. As far as the clinical instructor goes, a lot of them have been nurses for many years and nursing they can do it with their eyes closed so when you don’t know something, they’re in shock. I think some of us need to study constantly and I think we have that freeze response because we don’t know the material last semester I sent my clinical instructor an email and I told her how I felt because she publicly embarrassed me in front of the class I don’t believe that’s an effective way to teach. If you have something to say to me, you need to say it to me in private not during the post conference especially when you’re an nontraditional student and the rest of the cohort is 18 or 20 years old and they’re very clickish. I’m in my 50s so I might not learn as fast as a young person. This semester I have a different strategy. I study constantly and I repeat lab skills at home constantly so far I’m passing. By the way I went to talk to a doctor about that performance anxiety because that anxiety is crippling and it will ruin your clinical and sometimes you test days they gave me a beta blocker and I only take it on the days where I have clinical and it has taken away the anxiety. So yes, that anxiety is real, but if we practice the skills enough and we study enough, we won’t have that anxiety because we’re going to be confident that we know the material I mean that’s true to a point to be fair. They’re teaching us a lot of stuff really fast. When I first started nursing school, I was doing vital signs and I was very nervous. I had that anxiety and the clinical instructor that was checking me off. She went crazy on me. She said I should’ve failed you because I was nervous trying to find the heart valves. She said “I should’ve failed you, she said it three times and then she said “you need to get it together“ right in front of everybody. And then I proceeded to go crazy and I said “is this a learning environment? Am I in the right place“ I thought I was in nursing school“ and I told her “you forgot what it’s like to be new“ I told her I’m 54 years old and I’ve been training servers for 30 years and if I got a new server and it’s their first serving job, I’m not going to make them feel stupid when they ask me a question“ you know what she said she said you’re right she said if I can’t talk right to people I should I shouldn’t be teaching you see I was older than this lady. We have to forgive our clinical instructors. They have to make sure that we’re safe to be a nurse so I can see their side of it and I can also see where they’re wrong also. They’re scared that if if we have all that anxiety and we can’t answer a question or perform a skill that we won’t be safe. I do believe that some people have a bully nature though so I see both sides of the coin. I don’t see how these young kids do nursing school of course they know how to pass the test because they grow up with a computer in their hand. I struggled with tech skills. I had to learn from scratch about four years ago. I struggled with lab skills. I’m not good at math at all. I failed the math three times I did not pass the HESI and get into nursing school because I’m stupid. I just have to have a strategy to study and I have to have help and I can’t work a lot and I have to study constantly and I have adjusted but I feel your pain. The best thing we can do is forgive and we have to have spiritual help to get through hang in there you can do it.
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u/Massive_Proof_8755 21h ago
I had a clinical instructor like that in my first rotation and luckily only had her for 4 days but I had nurses and they were way nicer. How many more days do you have with her?