Nursing school provides you with the opportunity to practice your skills in actual health care facilities. You will be supervised and graded, both by your clinical instructor and by hospital employees helping to orient you, called preceptors. Just as your first goal as a nurse in practice is to do no harm, your first goal as a clinical student is not to scare your instructor. Perhaps you feel especially confident in a clinical setting because you have worked in a hospital before as a nurse aide, or maybe you have EMT (emergency medical technician) training and have started IVs in the field. No matter how confident you feel, it is important not to overstep your boundaries as a student! If you begin performing unassigned, unsupervised tasks beyond your level of nursing school training, complicated liability issues come into play. Instead of being impressed, your instructor may reprimand you (or worse, depending on the insult).
Come to clinicals prepared! If the facility allows you to come in the night before to select patients and read their charts, do so, and study them well. Write down the names of any medications you might be giving and research them thoroughly the night before. Arrive well-rested and early on the clinical day, dressed in approved attire and neatly groomed. Be prepared to listen and observe preceptors carefully. If you are checking off on a skill you have learned in the skills lab, try to review it again in the lab before performing it on a person. (You will discover that performing a skill on a person is much different than using a dummy, and you want to make certain you know exactly what you’re doing to counteract any unexpected distractions!)
Even if this is your first time performing a skill on a patient, it is not necessary to tell him/her that it is your first time. The patient already knows you are a student, so he/she has probably guessed you have little experience. It is okay to feel nervous on the inside, but try to project an outer image of confidence. You are being supervised by an experienced nurse whom you can look to for guidance.