Junior nursing students have spent the last two years at Creighton in classrooms learning the practical skills they will need when they start clinical rotations. But no amount of studying pathophysiology, microbiology or lifespan development could have fully prepared Nursing junior Carolyn Dinsdale for her first day in the operating room.

On her first day of clinical rotations, Dinsdale experienced something a little bit unusual for a 20-year-old college student: the birth of a child.

“Although it was not a very beautiful picture, it was a miraculous moment to see the first breath of a human being,” Dinsdale said.

So how do students make the incredible jump from the safety net of classes and written exams to the real-life stress of clinicals, where they will practice newly acquired nursing skills on real patients? According to juniors who are just now beginning clinicals, it hasn’t always been easy.

Dinsdale said that while she was nervous to jump into clinicals, she knew her coursework the last two years had prepared her for this moment.

“Unlike other schools, we start nursing school freshman year,” Dinsdale said. “All our classes are with nursing students and geared toward nursing students.”

Hilarie Price, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing, said she hopes students will feel prepared to start clinicals, but many students are still nervous to interact with patients.

“I think most students experience some anxiety about meeting their first patient but are also very excited to finally put into practice all they have learned in their coursework and lab experiences,” Price said.

Dinsdale said she feels the nursing faculty and staff prepared her and other junior nursing students for the start of clinicals as well as they could. But she knows that giving practice shots to a dummy isn’t quite the same as giving real shots to patients.

“I’m really nervous about giving shots,” Dinsdale said. “You can’t be nervous about that; you need to be confident. So I’m nervous about being nervous.”

Like Dinsdale, Nursing junior Chelsea Weyrauch is grateful for the lessons from the nursing school her freshman and sophomore years.

“I feel like they’ve [nursing faculty] done a good job at connecting what we do and what we’ve been learning to real life situations,” she said.

While Dinsdale is still anxious about some aspects of the leap from the classroom to clinicals, she’s excited to work with people other than her fellow nursing students and professors.

“I’m really looking forward to actually having patients and forming relationships with the staff and the patients,” she said. “I think I’ll do a lot better when I have hands-on work.”

Weyrauch agreed with Dinsdale.

“I am most looking forward to the patient interaction,” she said. “I think learning from them will be really beneficial.”

Junior nursing students won’t be completely alone in this endeavor, though – professors will be around to help assist and guide the students as they get into the flow of working in a hospital.

“I’m really looking forward to using what we’ve learned in the classroom and applying it in a more comfortable setting before we get out and do it as our job,” Weyrauch said.

Price, who has 25 years of teaching experience, echoes Dinsdale and Weyrauch’s sentiments.

“Students have so many opportunities to truly make a difference in people’s lives,” Price said. “Not only do I want students to learn as much as they can from their patients but to realize that even as students, they are very important to every patient for whom they care.”