Excellent point. In my humble opinion, a nurse being oriented and the nurse doing the orientation should not even be counted in the staffing pattern..... but there I go... dreaming again.

Hello, all. I wanted to add my take on the question about nurses eating their young. I apologize in advance for it's length.

I graduated in 2006 but have yet to take my board exam... partly due to finances, but mostly fear.

I had the same instructor three of four semesters... an instructor who's response to my "you never have anything positive to say to me," was "if you want positive comments from me, you're going to have to ask for them." This same instructor was always telling me I was too slow, to which I finally replied, "I'm not slow, I'm deliberate and there's a difference." And along with those honest thoughts, is the one that I ended up learning more from her than anyone.

I had excellent nurses to work with and ones who were more than willing to share everything pertinent about patients' physical conditions... up until my senior semester. Then I got the preceptor from hell during my senior clinical. She was about 15 years younger than my *mature* age, very condescending, thought nothing of screaming at me/techs/other nurses/etc., and her actions told me that she got paid to do her personal business while I did her work. She touched a patient's obviously infected and unknown skin condition with bare hands and blew it off when I asked her about it. She refused to let me watch her start an IV because it was the first time for her. I can honestly say I learned nothing from her except 'don't do that, give it to the techs/aides.' (I refused to pass off to a tech any skill that I'd never done myself for a patient.) I could continue ad nauseum. Her lone positive comment during the exit review with my instructor was that she'd never seen anyone write care plans as well as me. Other nurses on this particular wing absolutely refused to answer any student's questions if the student was not their charge. The one sanity saving part of this semester was that I also got to evaluate my preceptor. Unfortunately, it came about 3 weeks and 9 shifts before the end of my semester, LOL, so I ended up having some very interesting moments after my comments to her about her communication skills and her lack of standard precautions.

So, when I pass my NCLEX, I have to believe that there are good nurses out there who have the patience of saints, who realize we cannot learn everything from books or from the limited number of patients we get during clinical, and who also realize we need to be challenged without being degraded. But I'm also afraid that just the opposite is true.

You ladies give me hope!