[coco100]

I am going on my first placement this year as a Nursing student. It is of 4 weeks duration and will be a combination of shifts over a 7 day roster. The placement will start in mid-April and conclude in mid-May.

I am getting more and more stressed out about it as each day passes.

Firstly: the university has not offered any placement venues on my side of the city (odd, seeing as I am in Adelaide and the city isn't that large!!) so I am up for about a 40min travel time each way for each of my three selected preferred venues (I just chose the closest ones to home). I understand that those in Sydney especially face longer commutes than this all the time and so this isn't really my gripe, it is more that the University can't confirm until 2-3 weeks out from the start date of the placement where I will actually be allocated.

Secondly: our rosters will not be available to us until we arrive for our FIRST DAY OF PLACEMENT. This is a bit of a problem when trying to source childcare/after kindy care/after school care for three children. I have contacted the Uni regarding this and they have advised I just have to deal with that and under no circumstances am I allowed to approach the venue beforehand to ascertain my hours.

Thirdly: when I have tried to book out a whole month of childcare full time for my two youngest to cover whatever shifts I may be given, the childcare centre we use has advised they are fully booked Mondays and probably on other days during the week too but she can't confirm that with me for another week or two until they finalise their other numbers...

aargh! Am I being silly about this or is it really as stressful as I am feeling right now? On top of the worry of finding care for the kids I am also nervous about doing something wrong and accidentally killing someone (it is a nursing placement).

I just find it so odd no one will be able to tell me what hours I will need to be available until the day I get there? And obviously I want to try and use as little childcare as I can as this isn't a paid placement and is likely going to cost us thousands in childcare fees. Hopefully I can do this by getting afternoon and weekend shifts but hey, who knows what will happen!

Sorry, just needed to get this out!

[ChickenRose]

Having done lots of clinical placements myself, I can tell you that they're not always as organised as we might hope! In my experiences, the hospitals were rarely prepared in advance (they are busy places) and a lot of stuff was organised on the fly. It was pretty common for uni to tell us to turn up somewhere and when we arrived no-one knew what to do with us! If we arrived on Monday and had a schedule for the week it was pretty exciting.

You just have to learn to take it in your stride.

It is a pain in the bum regarding arranging childcare, but unfortunately there might not be much you can do about it other than get all the daycare possible and arrange partner, friends and family to help pick up the slack. If you go into it knowing that you have to be flexible then it might make the transition a little easier.

As far as worrying about hurting someone - don't let that stress you! You're a student and will be supervised. No-one is going to put you in a dangerous situation, and if you feel out of your depth you just have to speak up and say so. The trained staff were students once too, they know how it feels

[RHJ]

Yep- welcome to the life of a student! We only got our Uni timetable on Tuesday telling us when we had to be there we start on monday. We are lucky to get 2 weeks notice of venues of placements and rosters. We have to put our lives on hold and be ready to snap to whatever they tell us to do. It fricking SUCKS! I have had my kids booked into full time childcare and aftercare so that I can work around that when i finally get there.

Trust me- It ain't going to get any better. But there are lots of us here in the same situation so we can always listen to venting about it.

[BlondieUK]

That.Just.Sucks.

Placements for working parents are just a nightmare. I had to travel back from Hong Kong to Melbourne twice to complete placements (which I knew I would have to do at some point), but they couldn't give me exact dates or where I would be until the week before! Flipping crazy. I just booked airfares for me and the kids and prayed it would be OK (I was lucky both times). Thank god my parents are retired, becasue otherwise I would have been screwed.

[katiecoop]

Unpaid placements have turned me off many a course. You'd think asking for a bit of structure to the slave labour wouldn't be that difficult... When it comes to universities though, they are still very much stuck in the past and haven't seem to have adjusted to the idea of students needing to work for income or look after children...

[JuliaGulia]

Unfortunately, it's just the reality of nursing placements. Every semester at placement time our discussion boards are flooded with queries and complaints, but it never changes. I have been fortunate enough to have support with childcare, but it is very difficult to manage.

[justthegirls]

There are more nursing students than there are placement places these days. Just because there are hospitals on your side of town, your uni may not have been able to secure you a place there as the hospital may have reciprocal deals with specific unis. If you're studying via distance it's harder to get a place too.

Your rosters won't be available to you because you need to work it out directly with the facility, that's not the uni's fault.

Unfortunately what you're experiencing is pretty much the norm.

[Julie-Anne]

Unfortunately it is the way it is and it's getting much worse from what I've heard since I graduated 2 1/2 years ago.

We only had to work AM/PMs over a 4-5 day week with no night duty, these days students are required over 7 days and night duty in the 3rd year. Unfortunately there are just not enough placements to go around and it's getting much more difficult for the students esp ones with families and other work commitments and unfortunately a few dropped out of the degree as it just became far too hard to manage around placements.

Most of my placements I only found the roster out on the first day and due to the fact that there needs to be an appropriate skills mix the roster can be quite difficult to change.

Just think it's not forever and think of the experience that you will gain, it's really on your placements where you can get a chance to practice and see things in the flesh so to speak.

This post has been edited by Julie-Anne: 24/02/2012, 04:08 PM

[Anivad]

Yes placements are hard! I am doing a dual degree, currently in my second year. I have 5 weeks placement this semester, 3 weeks in my city (unknown timetable) and 2 weeks in a town 4 hours away. For those 3 weeks here I have to hire babysitters to help with the school run, for the 2 weeks away I have to pay a nanny (my husbands hours are not school friendly). Those 2 weeks are goin to cost me $1000 and that's just this semester. I have more placement next semester and still another 2 years to go after this year! For us, it is very costly as we have no family to help. I totally understand your frustration. I also asked the uni for some advice and their advice was basically to suck it up or rethink degree LOL

[zenah18]

Unpaid placements have turned me off many a course. You'd think asking for a bit of structure to the slave labour wouldn't be that difficult... When it comes to universities though, they are still very much stuck in the past and haven't seem to have adjusted to the idea of students needing to work for income or look after children...

Couldn't agree more! I graduated from b social work. And I had to comPlete 1006 (yes that's one thousand and six hours) hours of placement hours! Omg and they left the crappy jobs all for me. I hated it. If only they gave me a dollar got every hour I worked lolll