Sorry, but its true. Finishing up my program I have done several hundred hours in the ER, and although there have been exceptions, by and large I found the ER Nurses useless in anything other than signing paperwork. No teaching, no precepting, frequent rude snotty attitudes, things like asking a student to leave the room before they do something(imagine a Paramedic preceptor asking a student to leave the patients room or house, or stepping outside of the ambulance so they can do an assessment).
Its not just me either, this was the same experience for literally EVERY other student in my class and the classes before and after ours, even students that were RNs commented on how much harder Paramedic clinicals were compared to Nursing clinicals and how much better they were treated as a Nursing student. One student who was an RN said he felt pampered as a Nursing student compared to how he was treated as a Medic student.
I guess its because they have no real incentive to teach, and don't even know what's important for a Paramedic to know. Its basically a situation where they are precepters by default because there is no one else to do it in a hospital setting. Its not practical to have ER docs do it and most ER techs aren't Paramedics, so that kind of leaves RNs stuck with a job they don't want and aren't very good at, and don't really have the time for.
I understand some of the hostility. You have a lot of really cocky Paramedic students, particularly some of the firefighters, so some RNs will intentionally try to make life difficult for EMS students out of resentment, but it really makes it hard to get much out of clinicals in that environment.
Its not just me either, this was the same experience for literally EVERY other student in my class and the classes before and after ours, even students that were RNs commented on how much harder Paramedic clinicals were compared to Nursing clinicals and how much better they were treated as a Nursing student. One student who was an RN said he felt pampered as a Nursing student compared to how he was treated as a Medic student.
I guess its because they have no real incentive to teach, and don't even know what's important for a Paramedic to know. Its basically a situation where they are precepters by default because there is no one else to do it in a hospital setting. Its not practical to have ER docs do it and most ER techs aren't Paramedics, so that kind of leaves RNs stuck with a job they don't want and aren't very good at, and don't really have the time for.
I understand some of the hostility. You have a lot of really cocky Paramedic students, particularly some of the firefighters, so some RNs will intentionally try to make life difficult for EMS students out of resentment, but it really makes it hard to get much out of clinicals in that environment.