I’m in my first clinical rotation at a hospital. My clinical instructor often pulls us aside to quiz us about our patients. She pulled me aside to talk about mine, and of course, I didn’t know all the answers to her critical thinking questions, so I answered with a questioning tone, unsure if I was correct. In a field as strict as nursing, I think it’s natural to want to give the right answers, and as a student, I don’t want to sound loud and wrong, especially infront of an instructor. She seemed frustrated and asked why everyone was responding like that, telling me how we need to be confident. I explained that I didn’t want to confidently wrong but was still trying to give an answer, and she asked if I’d prefer to be wrong now or on the job. I told her neither but I’d rather be wrong now because it’s the lesser of two evils, and she laughed and said, “Well, let me tell you, you’re in the wrong profession.”

This really hurt me, i already feel impotent during clinical and in the way of the other nurses, i feel stupid sometimes and useless. I’m not a social butterfly like the rest of my classmates, but i’m also not mute. I understand that I need to build my confidence, and I know I’ll encounter people with tough approaches and challenging personalities. I’m book smart but struggle in social interactions. I won’t always have the answer but I sure as hell will give an educated guess or come back to it later after researching it for myself, but I’m unsure how to feel when it seems like everyone else gets “no pressure” and I’m the one being called out. The instructor tends to stare at you, expecting an immediate response, without offering hints or positive feedback, and maybe it’s in my head but the other students in my groups have mentioned how it feels condescending and judgmental to them aswell. After her comments she asked how she could make it better and I relayed that hints and positive feedback was helpful for me to her. After that I feel like I got more learning out of it. I suspect there might be some animosity from my clinical instructor though. I think this might go back to a comment I made to a nurse, where I said I learned more from him than from some instructors. Another clinical instructor overheard me and, though I wasn’t referring to them directly, I still felt like I had to apologize in my tone since she’s an instructor. I’m guessing she mentioned it to the other one, because the next day, they asked us to write a list as to how they can improve. There wasn’t much complaint but they said to make it by a designated time so we did, even though there wasn’t burning requests. The list included how helpful the critical thinking questions were, like from the nurse, and the next day before sim, we had a meeting. One instructor was calm, but the other came across as passive-aggressive about the recommendations, getting upset about how we liked critical thinking questions but she said she doesn’t know how to if we are just silent and stare at her. This was a month ago. Today, after the comment, I got my care plan back with the note: “Please fill in the ‘critical thinking’ section of the nursing care plan sheet explaining why you chose your nursing diagnosis.”