Every nursing student, or nurse probably has their own horror stories to share of bad mentoring and spiteful mentors. Such experiences have sometimes left me wondering if its even worth it to finish my degree and to pursue nursing.
I know that many of my class mates have had exceptionally traumatic experiences here in Finland, simply because they were foreigners.
I’ve been wanting to write a public statement and letter to all mentors for a log time now, to help shed some light on some of their behaviour. However someone at Allnurses.com beat me to it, and wrote a heart breaking lamentation about her mentoring experience that I am sure almost every nurse can relate to. Check it out: Dear Preceptor
One thing that became actually a common experience here for me in Finland was that my mentors never had the guts to tell me that they had a problem with me to my face. they would often talk behind my back, and ask someone else to approach me, concerning perhaps something I might have said weeks ago. Now what makes this particularly annoying is that it often has to do with a misunderstanding, owing to my not so perfect Finnish skills.
The last time this happened, it was actually the mentor herself who told me that I said something the previous week. It made me so angry because she heard me completely wrong, and so I told her that it was completely unfair of her to only approach me a week later, and that it would have saved a lot of tension if she just had the guts to ask me whether or not she had understood me correctly.
Constructive criticism is an art, and I believe everyone can learn it, and I feel that if a nurse is training to become a student mentor, the training should include criticism techniques. Nursing students are scared, fragile beings that often hang on every word the mentor speaks (especially so in the beginning of the studies), and thoughtless, insensitive behaviour can have devastating effects on the confidence and motivation of the student.
Anyone want to share other experiences concerning mentoring?

Health Tip: Sneezing and coughing on public transportation during this so called swine flu season may induce mass panic attacks amongst paranoid passengers. For your own safety, make sure to be discreet in public places with any non swine-flu specific symptoms that may resemble those specific to swine-flu.





So, with about 1,5 months to go until we graduate, running around like headless chickens at our school, trying desperately to hand in drafts for our theses, getting papers signed and filed, writing last minute re-exams, attending courses that were missed, just when our schedules cannot get any more full, a message arrived in our inboxes a week ago:
So this is why we have been cordially introduced to Ovid medline and Pubmed, as well as Cinahl (now EBSCOhost). A kind and meek librarian (blesshersoul) took the liberty of guiding us through the treacherous meadows of AND’s and OR’s and through the valleys of keywords… all of which, needless to say, did not stick with many.
but I just never got on well with Pubmed. It cannot be that I hold a grudge against it for never being able to interpret my carefully selected keywords appropriately, or for always wiping out my meticulously constructed searches just when I seem to be getting the sort of titles that have even the slightest concurrence with my search needs, oh no… No, I seem to have a completely baseless hatred for poor old innocent little Pubmed, which was apparently merely constructed for the use of teaching stressed out, frustrated people who have no time to waste, that they really do need to learn the virtue of patience.


This is me in the Operating Room, or as it is known in Zambia: Operating theatre. The procedure I’m scrubbed for is a tracheostomy.
I’m totally going to miss Zambian food! (which tastes best when using your fingers)
I went on a stroll into town with a friend. this road is just around the corner from the UTH.
Independence avenue where my friend and I happened to stroll by. Its actually a very pretty street
(Above: Nurses’ strike worsens situation at hospitals” – nurses and doctors strike in response to a major corruption scandal at the ministry of health 10 billion Kwacha scam. 1USD=5500ZK, and 1€=7000ZK. – photo courtesy of a friend)




