She must need hearing aids because she sure as Hell isn’t listening to anything that I have to say

The class started out okay. I didn’t talk much. I was still jaded from my first attempt. I missed the first day of class due to my 3-year-old son turning off my alarm clock. As luck would have it, it wasn't the first time that that had happened to me. It also happened during my first attempt at NSG 222. Irony is a strange thing.... Anyways, I emailed her to let her know what had happened and got a generic reply. She had moved our classroom for the next day but did she tell me in her reply? Hell no. That would've been the NICE and PROFESSIONAL thing to do. Instead, I missed an hour of class the next day as well because I had no idea that the room had changed. Nice.

Things started to go really bad for me after I challenged a questionon the second test. Prior to starting the quarter, I was advised by others notto challenge anything with this instructor. Before speaking to my instructor, Iconsulted another nursing instructor that I know outside of the program. Shetold me that she thought my rationale was good and that I should question it. Iapproached the situation very carefully, and was delicate with my choice ofwords. Here is a synopsis of the question:

You have a laryngectomy patient. What intervention would you teach to promote mucous membrane integrity?

A. Drink 8-10 glasses of water per day

B. Take steamy showers

C. something

D. something

The answer that she had was A. My answer was B, because there was no mention of how long post-op the patient was and I had to go with patient safety. The response that I got was anything but reasonable. She said that allof the answers might be poor but that I needed to figure out what the bestanswer was. No ifs, ands, or buts. She wouldn’t listen to my rationale and cutme off right away. She said that I should have ASSUMED that the intervention was for a long-term patient. Ummm... okay.... maybe if we were talking about home care, but in the hospital setting I'm going to be teaching the patient how to stay alive. I was shocked to say the least. I pay tuition to come hereevery day and work my butt off, not to be treated like a high-school studentwho has no choice but to come. I knew going in that she was probably going tobe sarcastic and rude, but I still expected her to at least listen to me. The first time doing med recall with her was also a disaster. I was going over Heparin with her when she interrupted me by asking me what she called a "HIPPA rule". I kept saying things like, "Check the patient, check the ID band...". She wanted me to change the needle, which if I can recall correctly, has NOTHING to do with HIPPA. Before this incident, she hadn’t written much on my process tool. Now all of asudden, everything’s wrong and I’m incompetent. Besides not hearing me out, shewasn’t even reading my process tool. I have two examples specifically of thisin regards to her not reading what was on it, and one good example concerningmy performance check-off. I was given my scenario with no written or verbalinstructions, so I just did what my previous instructor had told me to do. Shesaid not to worry about the lines, and to just write down what you would do inorder and write your rationale beside it. I had seven actions total, my fiveskills and two assessments. I was really trying to be as thorough as possible.I can’t remember specifics about my scenario, but the short version is that mypatient had CHF and the respiratory therapist is in the room suctioning when Icome in. So first I put “assess lungs and oxygen status” and then I put that Iwould give the Lasix IVP and so on. She sees my scenario and sees that I haveseven “actions” and starts to get upset that I didn’t use the five lines. She’salso only reading it half-asked and starts loudly asking about the suctioningover and over again. Well, it was last, after my reassessment, and only if itwas needed. She told me redo it only using the five skills. Since she had beenso hyper-focused on the suctioning, I assumed that maybe she wanted me to takeover for the respiratory therapist. So now that’s first on the list and theLasix IVP is 2^nd. It was wrong. She said that I missed the prioritywhich was the Lasix and that I have to come back and do another scenario. Itried to tell her that I had that the first time but she wouldn’t hear me out.Desperately wanting to get her back on my side, I fumble and fidget and lose myconcentration. I can’t find the tuberculin syringe to do my Heparin skill, so Igrab a 3 mL even though my med was less than 1 mL. Wrong. So I look again, andI still can’t see it. The only small one left is an insulin syringe. Wrong. Iknow this, but I also know that my instructor doesn’t have a high patiencetolerance. Long story short, I really blew it. I was still reeling from thescenario that she wouldn’t read. I came back the next day and everything wasperfect. I was not under the same amount of stress, which would explain myability to function normally.

I got an 80% on the final exam. Sheasked what was different about this test that contributed to my higher score. Itold her that I felt that the test questions were pretty clear, which was onlyhalf- true. After I got up and asked her my first question, I could sense thatshe was really irritated so I didn’t ask her my other two questions, which Iended up getting wrong. Even though I knew that I didn’t successfully pass the coursefor a second time and that it would result in my dismissal, I still wanted togo over the questions. I want to know what I’m doing wrong so that I can fixit. It’s true in every single course. I want to review every test so that I canget better. I would be concerned if the student didn’t want to review the test.A student who doesn’t want to know what they’re doing wrong obviously doesn’tcare enough to change. I think that it’s incredibly unfair for me to be treatedthat way for the pure and simple fact that I wanted to learn. I think that it’sstrange that I didn’t get my clinical evaluation until after the final. I alsothink that she had every intention of failing me for clinical if I had passedthe lecture portion. My clinical evaluation was terrible. She said ( or yelled,rather) that I was unsafe to administer Heparin (even though I had done it justfine in clinical), my care plans weren’t specific enough to my patient, my medrecall was terrible, and that a few weeks ago, my partner and I didn’t ask fora med reconciliation form. She said that it was HIPPA and that it was a patientsafety issue and that it was a big deal that we didn’t ask for it. I told herthat we assumed that there wasn’t one because it wasn’t in our stack of papers.The real question is, if it was such a huge patient safety issue, why didn’tshe say anything when it happened rather than wait until the last day of class?That was an issue 3 weeks ago and I had other patients after that. Was shegoing to let us keep making the same mistake over and over again?

Right after the heparin comment, I started to say, "You....". She then goes, "There you go... blaming others. You can't even take responsibility for your own mistakes". Had she listened to me, she would have known that I was just going to say that I was confused because she kept repeating "HIPPA" over and over again in the med room at clinical. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized that she was talking about my performance exam, which isn't really even fair because she went out of her way to intimidate me during my check-off.

I was allowed to look at my finaland ask questions about it. At question three, she yells, “I’m not going to sithere and argue with you about this. If you want to know because you want toknow than fine, but….” I’m not sure why she’s so defensive about the questions,but some of them are eerily familiar to the way she asks questions. She’sunwilling to accept that other instructors require different things in regardsto their process tools, and that some instructors even use their ownparameters. She’s made snarky, passive remarks about my ADHD that I haven’tdisclosed to her, which means either that she’s on the Reinstatement Committee,some faculty members may have some confidentiality issues, or both.Nonetheless, nothing she said hurt as much as when she told me that I needed tofind a new career, because I wasn’t good enough to be a nurse. I might not bean “A” student, but I bend over backwards to change something if need be.

I've never encountered a more cruel and calculating instructor as Shipley. Her reputation out in the community is fierce, but it's nothing compared to having a front row seat to watch the devil rip your heart out.

Next post: Word of the day: blame... and how I figured out that these assholes were working together....