clinical inexperience

I keep hoping that I'm eventually going to feel more comfortable during my clinical days, but so far it has yet to happen. Fortunately I actually got a good night's sleep last night, went to bed at 9:30 for my 5 am, it was dreamless, deep and blissful. But as soon as I set foot on the hospital floor this morning my body is in a constant state that I can only liken to a panic attack. But prolonged, like 7 hours prolonged. I actually did better last week when my patient was rather needy and I had to help her pretty much my whole day. I didn't realize my panic then, the day was just a blur of brief and bed changes. But this week I have a very easy patient and I'm losing my mind. How do I look busy when I have nothing to do or don't know what to do? I ask other students if they need help or else look stuff up on my patient, trying to figure out the various lab tests, burrow in my chair. I just want to disappear. I can't emphasize how dumb and out of place I feel and it's a horrible feeling to have, which it looks like I'll be having for at least another year and a half. I practically jumped up at the end of the day to help a student clean his patient, who had an episode of urinary and bowel incontinence, apparently she didn't feel right have a male student nurse clean her up. I was happy to help, after last week that's something I now have plenty of experience at. The past couple of weeks I've even seen my primary care doctor on the same unit as me but I won't even say 'hi' because 1. I've only seen him 3 times before and don't think he recognizes me and 2. In my heightened perpetual panic state I don't think I'd make the best impression. I swear they're gonna wind up calling a code on me because I'll probably drop dead of a stress related heart attack. Maybe I'm going through perimenopause right now and that's what's giving me the insane level of anxiety with this? I just keep praying that something is going to reveal itself to me, in terms of a clinical experience that I actually feel comfortable in. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's psychiatry or the OR rotation. My God what am I going to do if I get through all of nursing school and have yet to find my niche and still feel the same as I do now? I wish I could write more about my experiences but I'd be violating patient confidentiality, can't break HIPAA privacy. Well, keep your fingers crossed for me that I get a good night's sleep tonight.