Being in nursing school is hard. But that’s because being a nurse is hard. But nursing school doesn’t teach you everything! Mostly because it’s impossible to cram everything you need to know in nursing school– but also because, you can’t teach certain skills in a classroom. These are 5 things that you won’t learn in nursing school that are vital to being an awesome nurse.
1. How to exhibit empathy
This is one of my favorite videos of all time and it explains empathy PERFECTLY:
As I’m learning right now in my MSN Nurse Educator classes, we sometimes have to assign non-empathetic students to patients that might help develop their empathy. But not everyone does this. Unfortunately, there are nurses that completely lack empathy; they might have always been that way, but some have lost their empathy over time because nursing is an emotionally draining career.
2. How to comfort someone
This kind of goes with the first one, but 99.9% of the time, empathy doesn’t help someone in the midst of a panic attack, for example. Sometimes you have to be serious first with someone who needs comforting in order to get them to that head-space of being able to talk coherently and listen. For example: telling someone firmly to stop talking for a moment and to breathe through their nose and out through their mouth (and then breathe with them).
3. How to de-escalate someone
This is the one you will have way more often than you think. When someone is threatening you and psychotic, how to talk them down. Some of my go-to’s are “why are you feeling that way?” and then following it up with “we are on the same team, let me help you”.
4. How to demand respect
This one took me a while to figure out because it is in my nature to let people walk all over me. But you have other patients and do NOT have to take being cursed at or called names. I have told patients manyyyy times that I do not appreciate the way they are speaking to me and that I can come back when they are done being rude to me.
5. How to act like you have it together and hold back your emotions
To be completely honest this is still so hard for me. I know that you’re supposed to create boundaries with your emotions and feelings, but in the spirit of honesty, I have to attend therapy solely because of the emotions (grief, anxiety, depression) from patient death.
There is nothing that makes me want to shut down more than when I have to go from breaking someone’s ribs from CPS compressions, turning their monitor off, and having to notify the patient’s family that their loved one is dead, only to go next door to be berated by a patient that they waited 15 minutes for their orange juice. But you put on a fake smile and apologize (or, alternatively, you don’t and instead say “listen you’re on an ICU and there are people literally dying around you, so unfortunately your orange juice is not priority” oops 🙊)
Okay so moral of the story, NURSING IS HARD. And while there are a lot of psychomotor skills that you have to learn with nursing and things you have to memorize, there are emotional skills and people skills that nurses need to know that cannot be taught in the traditional setting. If you’re a nursing student or a brand new baby nurse, I’m thinking of you and I’m rooting for you! You can do this. And you’re going to be a good nurse if you work your butt off and treat people the way you want to be treated.
Experienced nurses: what are some things that you think nursing school doesn’t teach you?
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