The day starts at 4:30 a.m. A group breakfast consists of a quick stop at Dunkin’ Donuts before driving an hour to Nashua, 45 minutes to Manchester, or to Maine.
Upon arrival to the various hospitals, UNH nursing students truly experience hands-on learning as they care for patients, learn the basics of the field, and enjoy the wonders of hospital food, all the while being a full-time student at UNH with courses that test not only your intellectual strength, but your ability to handle stress.
For senior nursing student Lindsay Bergmann, this was a typical clinical day for past two years, on top of which she added studying, socializing, and the commitments of most every college student.
Bergmann, a tall, dirty-blonde haired woman with brown eyes, is currently one of 70 nursing students in the College of Health and Human Services, comprised of 68 females and two males.
“We [as a class] just get each other,” Bergmann said. “We definitely have a lot of rigorous and demanding courses. It’s funny because the men don’t seem to get as stressed out as the women of the program do. They don’t over-analyze... we tend to freak out where as they are more calm.”
One positive aspect of the program is the close ties it creates between students.
“It’s something the comes over time... when we were first introduced to each other we were all very competitive still.
However, as you move on, you learn how to help each other,” Bergmann said. “For example if you know someone is better at the respiratory system or something, you ask her for help while you can help her in another area.”
Bergmann knew from high school that nursing was her passion.
“I knew that nursing was what I wanted to do,” she said. “I had also heard good things about the nursing program here. I wanted to be close to home... I live in Keene but far enough away so I could do my own thing.”
Through her experience in the maternity realm, she found her true passion - mid-wifery.
“I was fortunate enough to see a live birth... it was a lot of fun. I definitely found my passion,” she said. “I was crying. The grandmother took my picture for their baby-book.”
The required clinicals are once a week for sophomores and twice a week for juniors. They help students to apply the skills learned in the Intro to Nursing program, such as making a bed, bedside manner, and how to speak to patients.
“Your med/surg clinical is way more intense as you could possibly have two patients to be responsible for,” Bergmann said. “Sometimes you aren’t paired with nurses or mentors that are open to teaching, whereas other times you have a nurse who really shows you things.”
Some students are able to practice IV lines, helping people ambulate, and giving medications to patients during clinicals.
“This is where you really start to understand,” Bergmann said. “This is what I’m reading in their chart, this is what I see when I walk in the room, this is what they are complaining of, this is what they look like, and this is what their lab results are telling me. You start putting all of the little pieces together.”
When nursing students are not doing their clinicals, they are busy with an intense course load comprised of courses in community or mental health and in maternity and pediatrics. Lindsay has anywhere between five to eight hours of class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, days when she does not have clinical.
Bergmann also traveled to Uganda last summer for IROP where she studied HIV and helped to inform about protection, and support loved ones who had the disease.
“I had always wanted to go to Africa, and it was a perfect way to combine my discipline and traveling,” Bergmann said.
As a senior looking towards her spring semester, Bergmann is preparing for her senior practicum: an aspect of the program that requires students to work a full-time internship in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or Maine for 32 hours a week, observing and learning. Shifts for this requirement are both day and night, and students do not get paid.
“You don’t know if you are going to be working nights, days, eight-hour shifts, 12-hour shifts. We have no idea what we are getting into,” Bergmann said. “People are dropping out of housing and finding places to live in the area they are assigned.”
As president of the Student Nursing Organization here on campus since her sophomore year, Bergmann has also participated in numerous activities and conferences. The conferences she attended were located in Texas and Nashville, where she went to seminars and met many nursing students from schools across the country. The organization also supports fundraisers, socials for students to get to know the professors of the program, and a guest speaker series that enable the students to hear from experienced nurses n different locations such as correctional facilities, the Army, or emergency rooms in city hospitals.
One of the negative aspects of the program according to Bergmann is the cost factor. Requirements include stethoscope at $75, palm pilots at $400, books at $400-500, and scrubs at $70, amongst various other things.
“I think my nursing class as a whole feels prepared, but it’s scary knowing that everything falls on you, that the things we do have a greater responsibility now,” Bergmann said.
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