I was recently asked by the founder of Nursing Ideas to write a post to describe how my motivations and purpose for starting a website for Nursing Students’ Opinions. The idea for this site started from a few events that occurred in my first year as a nursing student and the Journal of Undergraduate Life Sciences (JULS), which I was a part of in my undergrad.

Situations I encountered as a first year nursing student in classes and in clinicals led me to question my preconceptions of nursing education, nursing as a “caring” profession, and the status of nursing students in the whole scheme of the healthcare system.

The first event was during a pharmacology class, when the student union made an announcement about a letter they received written from a few first year nursing students about how, as students, we were sometimes very disrespectful to our nursing instructors during lectures. After the letter was presented, there was a lot of discussion about agreements/disagreements one issues brought up in the letter, such as being over demanding with grading systems, asking questions in a rude manner and the lack of professionalism. The second event involved misunderstandings between students about how to share clinical knowledge and knowledge of their instructors. Knowledge is power, as nursing students we often unintentionally hog knowledge with our enthusiasm for learning. This can sometimes create tensions in the learning environment which may or may not be noticed by clinical instructors. There were also circumstances that continually recurred, such as students feeling ignored and unwanted in their clinical placements. I experienced a mild version of this, but there were a few students who told me they had instructors or nursing staff looking down and disrespecting them or leaving them on the hospital units alone/unsupervised. In addition, there was the issue of where nursing students’ voice stands in their educational institution and clinical placements. I remember vividly during morning rounds in one placement where a staff nurse threw a paper ball at my clinical instructor in the midst of a discussion on horizontal violence between nurses. I don’t know whether he did it out of good humour or if he was trying to stimulate more discussion, but he threw the paper pretty hard. Some of the other nurses were talking about seniority and generated questions about how it was so difficult to resolve conflicts with nurses who have been on the unit less than they have. I remember how I was tempted to stand up and say to the nursing staff that “as students we are constantly absorbing all the actions, comments, and attitudes that nursing staff and instructors express during our clinical placement. These actions, comments and attitudes affect our learning, our future practice, our perceptions and our passion for the profession. How can nurses who are known to the public as the most caring professionals end up being hypocritical when it came to our own colleagues and students? Where did all the respect and compassion go?” I still regret not saying anything during that meeting, but I was so conflicted at that moment. Was I willing to risk my academic career and risk the chance of being hated/neglected by the nursing staff? I still had a few more weeks that I had to be on the unit,and honestly I did not have the courage to speak up. The only thing I was able to do was to tell my instructor after morning rounds that we really respected her and the way she kept her cool in the meeting room. Recently I heard a story from a nursing student with first-hand experience in patient advocacy. He went out of his way to ensure that his patient, who had a critical heart condition, received nitroglycerin during an episode of chest pain when the nursing staff refused to give the medication for seemingly personal reasons. Although he was given a honourarium for the advocacy, he told me that he acknowledged that he could have been in a lot of trouble with the staff nurses and other instructors. Why? It is because as nursing students, we lack the “RN” title, putting us at the end of the food chain. We are afraid to speak out at times when there are issues that affects our learning and patient care because we feel that we don’t have a “Right” to speak and give suggestions. The single most important lesson I got out of these situations is about how understanding perspectives can allow student-student and student-instructor/nurse conflict resolution and drive change in the nursing profession.

At first, my reaction to these issues had been to just accept it as ”a part of the nursing education experience”; but I was conflicted because tolerance does not bring about change. Then one day, as I reminisced about JULS, an undergraduate student research journal I was a part of during my first degree, the idea for a nursing student newspaper came to me. The main purpose of JULS was to allow undergraduate students to present scientific articles of research they were a part of, to get their ideas out to the community of life science students. That’s what I felt was missing, a newspaper where nursing students can present their opinions on certain topics that affect our learning, and our present and future practice; a place where we can feel that we are not alone in our experiences and perspectives so that we are not afraid to advocate for ourselves and our patients.

The challenge was how to get the funds and generate interest for this project. I had to find the most cost-effective and efficient way to get the idea out to other students, which is why I decided o make a web blog site. Web blogs are easy to access and distribute, with minimal costs and can easily become viral, ie) spread to student bodies in different geographic locations in a very short time. In addition, having the website opened another opportunity to share learning and resources with students. I included introductions to different clinical placements that I’ve completed with information that I found important before going into the placements. I was able to link videos, documents and other web resources which I found helpful, and students could leave comments on what they found to be helpful for their studies and practice. 7 months after the idea of generating a website, with addition of suggestions from TAs and clinical instructors, the final product was completed.

Nursing Students’ Opinions is a website geared towards nursing students in general and not solely for nursing students in North America. I do understand that different social structures will create different experiences from different parts of the world, but it is the experiences that generates interest and reflection. My hopes for this website is to allow nursing students to voice their perspectives with an attitude of reflection and not that of blame, to generate innovative ideas that fosters positive change before we become blinded into the culture of our profession and to remind nurses of situations they might have experienced when they were students which they could give tips/suggestions to overcome.