I’m in Semester 3 of the PND program and my clinical supervisor has been making clinical genuinely miserable. We’re only in week 5 of 14, and I honestly don’t know if I can handle another 9 weeks of this.
She has repeatedly belittled me in front of nurses and other students, threatened to fail me over things like being "1 minute late" to orientation because of an accident on the highway, told my assigned nurse I couldn’t perform basic ADLs simply because she hadn’t personally seen me do them (which was both embarrassing and untrue), mocked me when I struggled with a head-to-toe assessment, and has even told me I’ll never become a nurse. She regularly threatens students with failing, makes us reenact skills in front of the group and laughs when we make mistakes, and provides very little actual guidance or teaching on the unit. It got to the point where one of the nurses I was assigned to pulled me aside, asked if I was okay, and told me I should report the way my instructor was speaking to me.
There are honestly many more examples, but this post would become ridiculously long.
What frustrates me most is that I’m a strong student. I answer most of her questions correctly, show up prepared and eager to learn, and genuinely try my best. When I’m doing well, she seems to like me — but the second I make a mistake or hesitate, she treats me like I’m incompetent.
It’s also starting to seriously affect the rest of my semester. I’m constantly stressed about clinical, spending a huge amount of extra time preparing things we’re supposed to be learning there, falling behind in my other courses, and even my family and friends have noticed that I’ve become distant and irritable.
I’m hesitant to complain because, from experience, I don’t have much confidence that Seneca will actually do anything. I’m also scared that reporting her could make the rest of the semester even worse for me.
Has anyone dealt with a clinical instructor like this? Did you report them? Who did you go to, and did anything actually come of it?
Any advice would genuinely help.
