Dear Student Nurse,
I remember what it’s like to be you: the shaky, sweaty palms fumbling with medication vials, the unbearably early mornings, queasy stomachs, and how could I ever forget the toe-curling smells? I can vividly recall the many breakdowns I had in the wee hours of an all-nighter before a big exam, hyperventilating and being absolutely certain I wouldn’t pass. I mean, how can anyone do well on a multiple-choice question with four correct answers?
I’ll never forget the first time I hit a code bell, the way my heart hammered as I watched someone else’s stop. I remember the weight of the breathtaking sorrow I had to learn to carry with me. But I want to let you in on a little secret that no one told me when I was in nursing school: you are going to be one seriously incredible nurse.
Every calm and collected charge nurse, nurse anesthetist, nurse practitioner, and chief nursing officer was once a wide-eyed nursing student who nervously stepped onto the floor for his or her first clinical day. What you are going through is an experience that binds nurses of every type together: we’ve all been there. There is a process that turns normal every day people into exceptional nurses, but the road sure isn’t an easy one. To become a critical thinker who is able to accurately assess and efficiently treat patients requires absorbing a seemingly insurmountable mountain of knowledge and skill. While you are scaling this mountain, however, you will rely heavily on your guide for the climb: the nurse educator.
Some people have mistakenly come to regard education as a passive process where the teacher is the sole party responsible for disseminating knowledge to the student. Unfortunately, learning any subject takes much more than simply gaining information by osmosis and nursing education, for better or for worse, is a different animal altogether.
In the nursing ecosystem, there are experienced nurses with an enormous knowledge base as well as new nurses and students who are ready and capable of acquiring all this wonderful information, but just haven’t learned any of it yet. The tricky part is exactly how to transfer that knowledge safely to an entire new generation of nurses.
The essential concept that both students and instructors need to understand is that unless we work cohesively as a team, we won’t make it to see the summit.
Most students don’t realize that with every failing grade they assign, teachers feel like they failed too: failed to teach and support you well enough to succeed this time around. Even though we take no pleasure in being the ones to stop a nursing student from moving on to the next phase in the curriculum, we do it anyway because we have taken a solemn vow to protect our patients for as long as we are nurses. The Nightingale Pledge extends far beyond the bedside and into every lecture hall and clinical floor where nurse educators work our hardest to create the best nurses possible.
We don’t just want, but need to cultivate classes full of intelligent, compassionate, hard working nurses at the end of each semester. Unfortunately sometimes that means requiring some students to repeat the class so that they come away from one course with the foundation to flourish in the next, harder course, and eventually while taking care of critically ill patients. I know that I never understood this sacred duty until I started student teaching a nursing course for graduate school.
Enrolling in nursing school is like entering a contract where both parties, student and teacher, have to hold up their side of the bargain to do what’s in the best interest for their future patients. Nurse educators have the unique challenge and joy of transforming shy freshman into skillful, confident seniors and new graduates who will go on to change the world one bedside at a time.
It is our greatest pleasure to watch you grow into the person you are meant to be before our eyes. Even if you think we’re not noticing, we see how hard you work. It is our job to push you so that just when you thought you couldn’t possibly work any harder, you prove yourself wrong. That’s where the real learning happens.
So, how can I say with complete certainty that I know you are going to be one incredible nurse? Because not too long ago I was exactly where you are now, I did it, and that means so can you.
Good Luck!
A Future Nursing Instructor
