I failed my sterile wound dressing check off for the second time today and feel terrible about myself. I get one more try next week, but if I fail again I have to retake the whole lab class. Feeling pretty hopeless and I know my anxiety will be super high during the next remediation. Any advice?
Edit: I passed and my professor was very impressed with my improvement! Thank you for everyone that gave advice đđđź
I was wondering the same. What step? Same every time? Love your comment.
If you mess something up can you verbally correct yourself before the skill is over?
To an extent yes
Honestly if itâs the same step each time and you know that you messed up again just say it then but try not to like take everyoneâs advice and practice as much as possible as if you are testing out each time. Have someone watch you and act like they are the teacher even have them grade you with the rubric.
What step is it?
Where the heck are you guys finding these flexible schools đ a second skills failure is an automatic removal of the program at my school
My school literally doesnât have skills check offs. We have skills lab and our professors have to âobserveâ us do each skill, but if you make a mistake, you just do it again
Whatttt. Is it a public or private school? If I breathe wrong I get kicked out at my school :(
Ours too, they don't even observe us in lab we get observed by our instructor in clinical. But it is our responsibility to come find our teacher when we're ready to perform the skill. The only "check offs" we really had were for med administration.
Thatâs aggressive. GD youâre not a nurse yet.
Lol shit, I am a nurse and I fuck up my skills all the time đ
they say because it puts the patient at risk :/ which I understand but still
We arenât allowed to do it in clinical until we pass the skill in lab.
Neither can we :-)
Same you only got two tries and then it was a fail the class and have to retake it and be behind a term
In my program if you fail any class in the first semester, youâre not allowed to retake it :( you have to reapply and it sets you back a whole year :/
Practice as much as you possibly can. Have a classmate, coworker, family member, or friend practice with you until you get it.
I was able to redo a skill one time. The one I failed was the same one you had! I canât stress enough practicing at home or at school when you can. Record yourself and watch it back to see what you missed.
Writing every single step really helped me. Writing it a few times helped me ace it. I struggle w skills test outs bc itâs so so detailed. We get a three strikes rule as well, but no one will fail you even if you donât do an amazing job on the third try unless youâre an absolute danger to patients in clinical. I recently completed a third test out as well and it was more like a conversation w the director. Still nerve racking but she made it bearable. What are the skills?
The one I have to retake again is sterile wound dressing and wound packing
Ah yes. Just take your time. The nervousness causes us to forget things / draw a blank during test out. I take a low dose Xanax now before I go in. Find the thing that calms you down.
Get a teddy bear. Set up your phone and record yourself. Go through the steps. Watch the video back. When you find a mistake, stop the video and start the process all over again.
Practice over and over and over until youâre sick of it.
Do you have a Nursing Skills Coordinator in your lab? My school has an RN thatâs just dedicated to setting up, demonstrating, recording, and assisting with one-on-one skills practice. If you have someone like that, set up an appointment to practice and be corrected in real time. If not, I would ask to gather supplies to take home and practice. Assuming you have a check-off video (or find one on YouTube that matches your check-off sheet), do the skill step by step with the video. Write the process out on paper as well to solidify steps.
Memorize memorize memorize Like youâre learning lines for a play Then if for some reason you miss something, if you go through the script in your mind you can always reassess and you may be able to back track and tell them your mistake and not lose credit
I just had to go to my 3rd check off and I passed it! It was a IM injection I made a list of things that needed to be done and memorized it and then I would practice the check off over and over again until I did it right
go super slow. keep your hands up. dont break sterile field. if you're unsure of what you can touch or where to put something, ask whoever is grading you before you make a move. I too hated my sterile check off, it was so nerve racking. I could barely get the stupid gloves on lol. Practice at home.
Just slowly go through the motion. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Recognize your sterile field when youâre starting, and if you fuck it up, call yourself out and start over.
Iâm a RN and I have contaminated entire tables in the OR multiple times. My orientees contaminate stuff constantly. The important part is recognizing you contaminated something and not using it on the patient. You can always do it over on the real world. Itâs really no big deal. Mess up one dressing change or central line dressing change? You can open a new pack and do it over again. Mess up putting sterile gloves on? You can get another pack of gloves and do it over again. I mess up my gloves once a week. I toss em start over again. Even when thereâs a surgeon yelling to hurry up. Guess what? It happens. I donât get nursing schoolâs strict one shot to get it right policies. Thatâs not how it is in the real world of nursing. Iâve seen my CRNAs have to reprep an art line site 4 times. Iâve had to reprep surgery sites three times because someone accidentally touches it or something. No one is dismissed for messing it up. Were just redo it. No harm no foul. Nursing school was stressful enough without a nitpicker instructor for skills. Ugh.
Edit: for the haters downvoting me, youâre clearly not nurses yet. Youâll never be perfect when you are nurses. The important thing is that you recognize when there is a break in sterility and start over. Period.
Thank you for your honesty, I feel like if nursing instructors could be honest like this anxiety would be a lot less
What exactly are you messing up on? You need to go to lab practice hours and practice the skill if you have no idea how to do it. Don't go in blindly again, because evidently you didn't correct your mistakes after the first failure. If you have a friend in the class that passed, have them do you the favor of practicing with you. A good idea is to have them act as the instructor and stop you if you mess something up and have you recorrect. I have done this for classmates that have failed skills and they have said it helped them a lot. Have the rubric/checklist in front of you and make sure you complete every single step.
Write down the steps and verbalize them. Act it out at home. Recite the steps as much as possible. Watch YouTube videos on the skill. Good luck! You have come so far. Having to repeat an entire lab/class over a failed skills eval would suck... practice practice practice!!! You got this.