How to Prepare For Nursing Clinicals and Labs Efficiently?

Get The Most Out OF Your Clinical Experiences!

Are you trying to get ready for your first clinical practice? Feeling unprepared and overwhelmed. Don’t worry. Here are some tips to be successful. Learn how to familiarize yourself on your first day at the hospital and to take care of patients.

Be On-Time

If you are freshmen or a new nursing student, you will experience something you have never experienced before. So get some food before starting the clinical day. And reach on time. It communicates professionalism to your classmates and to your nursing instructors.

Suppose it is a new clinical site and the first day for you. Then try to wake up as early as possible, and make sure you get there in time.

Be Prepared

Come prepared! You should have a basic understanding of what the patients are going through, what medical conditions they have, what type of procedures they may go through, what medications they’re on, and their outcome.

You never want to arrive at the clinic unprepared because you’re caring for these patients. You are going to interact with patients and their families. To give them the best outcome, you have to make sure you’re ready and well prepared!

Last but important, get some sleep! If you don’t get some sleep, you won’t be able to remember all the things that you studied the night before.

Take Report on All the Patients

It’s crucial to practice this priorly because, whenever you get advanced up into your senior level. You are going to handle more patients. Ask as many questions as possible. If at any time there’s something you don’t know, ask! Clinical is the time where you need to learn as much as possible.

Take your notes and anticipate the outcomes, also leave room for flexibility because sometimes there will be some assignment changes. You are not going to be in your current unit where you are assigned. 

So be flexible. This will help improve your practical knowledge and make you understand what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Stay Engaged and Don’t Complain.

Please don’t complain about the day or how boring and slow it is. There may not be a lot going on with your patient. So it’s effortless to complain or pretend like you have to do nothing. Keep yourself busy the whole time. If your patient doesn’t have any procedures going on, ask other nurses on their floor what their patients are going through and if there’s anything that you can observe or a skill that you can practice, tell your clinical instructor! This is your time to ask and learn they will help you seek out that opportunity.

There is always something more that you can learn from your patient. Don’t just look at the last note, but look at every note related to that patient’s condition. Male sure you fully understand it. Learn about the medications you are going to be giving to the patient the next day. 

All Clinicals Are Important

Take every clinical as an opportunity to learn and to grow as a nurse. Here we can learn to care better for our patients. That’s the main goal in clinical settings. In Nursing schools, we think the main job is to get good grades and pass our program. But really, it’s so much more. It’s about the people and the patients we care for. So think of every time and every minute, and every second, you are at the clinical is a way for you to learn to care better for your patients.

How To Prepare For Skills Labs

Within the nursing program, we do get to do a lot in lab simulations. We learn hands-on skills and experience to build great team morale. All these prepare you to be a valuable contributor to healthcare. Let us explore some points on making you prepare for the real arena of life and death.

Know What to Expect

Get to know the questions that you have to deal with the scenario. Make sure you do your readings. Don’t act like you know everything because whatever can go wrong will go wrong in a lab simulation.

Make sure you read up on the topics and be prepared!

Have All Your Supplies

Make sure you have all of your supplies when you are going to the clinical lab. The below mentioned are some necessary supplies that would be helpful for anyone working in health care.

• Your Stethoscope
• Click pens. 
• Penlight.
• Chapsticks
• Gloves
• Scrub pants
• Scissors
• Drug Research Books
• Medical Research Apps (Ex: Medscape)
• The right shoes.

Set all your equipment out early, so you don’t forget anything at home, and don’t leave your equipment somewhere you forget when you walk out of the door.

Confidence

You have to be confident when you get in there. Don’t be scared to be the charge nurse in the simulation. For the group roles assigned to you, try to ask to be the charge nurse. So you can do all the assessments. Don’t be scared to take notes or be a medication person even though medications can get hard.

Here are some tips to reduce your anxiety:

• Keep your routine.
• Come in with a can-do and will-do attitude.
• When in doubt, ask!!

Get Familiar With The Types Of Equipment.

Take the initiative to either talk to your instructor or professor. Ask them to show around the supplies and instruments in the room. Learn to know how it works, their operations, But most importantly, know how to read your MAR (Medication Administration Record). MAR is where all your orders are, so take some time out of your day and have some initiatives to read it.

Watch Practice Videos

Watch videos of other simulations. Brush up on the process that you are going to do in the clinical labs. This way, you can prepare yourself and confidently engage in the task assigned to you.

In general, learn about assessments, learn about interventions, know about possible complications, and you will be good to go! 

Take the First Step!

Suppose you are looking for an institution to prepare you for clinical & lab trials better. You can get a degree from institutions like Labouré College. They have dedicated faculties, small class sizes, flexible online and traditional courses, Skill training labs. 

In short, think of every time and every second you’re at clinical is a way for you to learn to care better for your patients because that’s why we become nurses!