Of All Student Nurse Tools, Quality Stethoscope Proves To Be Most Important

Valencia, California: Nursing students are now starting their fall semester and as they prepare for the unknown, many seek the right nurse tools to make nursing school easier. List of tools are usually handed out before the classes even start. The list usually consists of study materials, uniforms, scissors, flashlight, and a stethoscope.

The problem is that almost everything on the list is costly as nursing tools and uniforms usually are. The student nurse then has to decide on where to spend the majority of their limited funds. Do they get the high quality uniforms to look their best or the titanium scissors that won’t get bent in the first semester of use? The answer lies in the tool that will provide them with the greatest success as a nurse – the stethoscope.

“There is nothing worse than to show up for class and feel like everyone else has an advantage over you,” Stated Raul Meza, instructor of a new Grad Nursing program at a major Los Angeles hospital. “Nursing school is hard enough, the last thing you want is to feel like you are falling behind because then it seems impossible to catch up. Being on the spot and expected to identify breath sounds and heart tones is stressful, but to do it with a bad stethoscope? Well you are just asking for a nervous breakdown.”

Registered nurses as well as student nurses use stethoscopes multiple times a day in a clinical setting. It is by far the most important and most used tool in nursing. A quality stethoscope can help a nurse detect fluid in the lungs in the form of crackles up to forty eight hours before it shows up on an x-ray. Having been able to treat that excess fluid as soon as possible can determine the type of outcome that a patient experiences.

“Most student nurses start with a basic stethoscope or are issued one when they start the nursing program. That kind of stethoscope never cuts it in the real world. The student has to stop and think that during their training they are assessing patients who are in the real world. These patients aren’t actors hired to be fake patients so students can practice on. No! Nursing students are listening to real lungs, real hearts from real patients and providing real feedback in a real clinical setting," reminds Meza. “If your stethoscope is not going to cut it when you are a real nurse then trust me when I say that it will not cut it while you are a student. A poor stethoscope is just too much of a disadvantage. Of all your nursing tools, that is where you want to invest your money, and you don’t have to break your bank to do it. You don’t need one that will cost you hundreds of dollars, no. There are affordable high quality stethoscopes that even an experienced ICU nurse like me feels comfortable using.”