Dec 01, 2007, 08:15 pm
I agree that if I was a palliative (or any for that matter) I would not like to be practiced on. However, we "practiced" on oranges and sponges.
Clinical placement is not for practice, it is for supervised practical experience. If I can assist my preceptor with cleaning up this (same, palliative) soiled pt, washing them, rolling them and doing all their other nursing care, then I see no reason not to carry out full nursing care, which in this case involves IM injections. I have a lot of aged care experience and provided much care to palliative residents / pts.
If I was a casual who had come onto this ward for the first time with limited experience as a MERN, would this still be the case that I would not be permitted to administer the injection?
As student nurses, I believe we should be able to encompass the full, holistic experience of nursing care within our scope of practice. Particularly, on placement, we are on the ward without being paid, having to travel quite a long way and having to give up our paid employment time.
If I was an inexperienced teenager then maybe it would be different, but I am a mature adult who would not be sent out on a ward if I was not deemed competent enough to be partaking in the role of a MERN (as a student), when (providing NBV are timely) I will have my registration come through as a MERN in four weeks or so from now.
I believe from this case, having witnessed the full situation from the beginning and knowing the div 1 involved, that the in charge preventing me from my educational experience simply did not want me to do it as she is too set in her ways.
