I don't want students anymore :(

Been feeling very frustrated about students during my shifts recently and wanted a place to rant and hear how other people felt about them.

Wanted to preface this by saying that I know it is hard to be a nursing student. I was one a little over 2 years ago, and I remember what it felt like to be paired with rude nurses who didn’t want you and how frustrating it was to be pushed into uncomfortable situations without much support. That said, I just don’t want to help them or work with them anymore. 

My hospital takes students in very frequently. We have morning shift students, evening shift students, weekday programs and weekend programs. Sometimes there will be 3 or 4 groups coming a week (oftentimes the same group will come twice), and since I’m on dayshift, I see pretty much all of them. It isn’t a once-in-a-while situation. It is sometimes every shift in my week.

I work in rehab, so most of the students are very verbal about the fact that they don’t care about the work I do and are more interested in ED, ICU or (horrifyingly) NP school right after graduation. Additionally, I just don’t have the social energy to spend on them. I’m sorry, I don’t really want to get to know you or hear about your plans of being a nurse anesthesiologist (wow so unique). You’re going to have clinical rotations here for a month, and then you’ll be cycled out with a new group.I’ll never see you again. I have to talk to patients all day long. I need my time to sit, plan, think, and chart. I have so much work to do, and if I stop to spend time on you, I’ll get behind and will likely need to stay late, rush care, or skip lunch.

I’m also a bit scarred from an incident where I was given 3 nursing students one morning, and one fainted while I was showing her how to cath, nearly injuring my patient and setting me pretty far behind while I made sure she was OK and attempted to de-escalate a situation with a now (understandably) frustrated parent of the patient. Thankfully, the student and my patient were ultimately OK, but I left the whole situation very rattled. I no longer let students do skills beyond changing briefs on very stable patients when they follow me.  

Nursing students cost me a lot of extra effort, and I am not given any compensation or extra resources to teach them on top of my other responsibilities. Maybe if I were given a differential for my work with them I’d feel differently, but I just despise the fact that my hospital sits back and collects a paycheck from their schools, while I’m the one who actually deals with them. I just don’t want to do it anymore. I’m here for my patients. Not for students. I did not become a nurse for this.

Thank you for listening to my rant! Sorry it was a bit of a downer.

**Adding that I really enjoy precepting orientees, since I’m actually training coworkers, and they’re legitimately interested in learning the work that I do. Students are just a different story.