Mary’s Pad

My Critical Care rotation is done, I have one interview down, one more rotation to go, and it’s really starting to hit me that we’re almost done! The hand-holding is coming to an end. They are about to let us fly. That’s a scary thought! But the truth is that we ARE ready to take that step, we’ve been trained, we’ve taken care of patients, we’ve done everything that a real nurse does, just with a LOT of supervision and hand-holding, but in essence, we are prepared to step out and practice. Do I feel ready? NO. And I don’t think anyone does, but the truth is that we are.

I think that this is where I’m starting to see the extent of trust that goes into the instructor-student relationship in this kind of setting, and how important it is to foster that trust relationship for the student to gain the most benefit. My current impression is that this is an intimate profession, and the relationships built into this profession are intimate just by definition. But that’s a whole other point. Back to the trust thing.

As a student, I have to trust that my instructors know what they’re doing when they’re assessing my competency to practice. When an instructor says to me, “you’re spot on,”, “you’re good to go”, “you’ll do fine”, or conversely, “I need to put you on a performance improvement plan, or “you’re not cutting it”, there has to be in me a sense that my instructor knows what she’s talking about. (I’m not being gender insensitive here, all my instructors are female).

Why is this important? Well, if I don’t have the sense that my instructor is competent to assess me, then I’m in serious trouble! I don’t know if I’m competent or not because I’m not a nurse. I don’t know if I am ready or not because I don’t know the definition of “ready.” I don’t know what I’m going to be best at because I haven’t seen it all. But they do. They’ve been doing this for years. They know when I’m getting it, and when I’m not. They know when I have the right foundation to build on and when I don’t. They know when I’m making the correlations and when I’m not. I have to trust them. I have to trust their judgement and their assessment of my skills and capabilities. I have to take the criticism positively and build on it. I have to rise to the challenge. If I don’t, then in essence I am sabotaging myself. I am jeopardizing MY OWN future career. I am undermining MY OWN education. They already have their own practice. They stand to gain nothing by failing me, or frustrating me. Instead, they are investing in me, so they are vested in me succeeding. They are pouring their knowledge and experience into me, and if I have two brain cells to rub together then I will open my ears, my mind, and my heart and take it all in. And I hope that I have been doing that every single day since I started this course, I just never consciously thought about it until this last rotation. My instructors have been, and will continue to be, some of my best allies and strongest advocates, because for the last two or so years they have been investing in me! And I will say, I have had some exceptional instructors, and I hope that I live up to their expectations of me.