I'm currently doing my best to accommodate a student whose panic attacks are actually broadly triggered - basically, any time she feels stressed at all, she panics (her words). She wants to be a nurse. She has been under a doctor's care for a year and the medication tweaks aren't helping as much as they should. I'll get her through my course, but if she can't get this under control, she does not have much of a chance of finishing her nursing training, or holding down a job as a nurse. I am wondering, if the medication doesn't improve her panic attacks substantially, whether I should speak with her about how this will affect her future in nursing school and a nursing career. Theoretically it should be her advisor's task, but our advisors are overloaded and don't get to know the students very well, and this student seems to be comfortable speaking with me. What do you think?
Wow. The student
must have considered this, right? Well, maybe not, but
probably she's thinking about it and about her career choices.
If the med changes don't help, maybe she'd welcome the chance to talk about this with someone she's comfortable with. How far along is she in the nursing program? Or is she in pre-med or biology? If the panic attacks can't be controlled, it seems like she'd have to consider alternate careers.
Right now she's taking microbiology from me, and plans to enroll in the RN program next year. She's a non-traditional student, and several of her family members are nurses. She withdrew from my anatomy course last term, so I think she'll actually have to wait another year before she applies for the RN unless she takes anatomy elsewhere. I'm not sure how many of the other prereqs she has finished for the RN program. She gets noticeably anxious when she's confronted, so I'm extra-ginger about how I correct her if she's doing something incorrectly in lab. I doubt that the faculty of the nursing school will be willing to do the kid-glove treatment during her clinical rotations, though. I have no doubt that in her current state she wouldn't last half an hour on the floor of an ER, OR, or other "high stress" part of a hospital.
Some discussion of these issues is beginning to emerge in my field, also. Basically, the thing is that while the student is entitled to accommodations in their role as student in our classroom, they are
not entitled to accommodations in a clinical setting if the tasks are an essential and bona fide part of the employment. So, for example, my students who have anxiety disorder might be able to have an accommodation that allows them to complete work outside of class, or to leave the room if they are beginning to experience anxiety. However, once they are in a clinical setting (a practicum or internship classroom), it is simply not possible for them to do their assigned tasks from another location, or for them to leave the room and leave 25-30 K-12 students sitting alone in a classroom. Further, they must be able to deal with students, parents and colleagues--including those who may be angry or confrontational.
