During nursing school, there is the tendency to live in a learning vacuum. The only interactions you have as a student are with your instructors, fellow students, and, if you are lucky to have them and can properly manage your time, friends from other majors and extracurricular activities.

Even on the bustling floor of a hospital during a clinical, when you are surrounded by a slew of other health care workers, it is easy to get a bad case of tunnel vision and see only your two or three patients, your instructor, and your fellow students.

This kind of tunnel vision is immediately shattered as soon as you hit the real world running. Suddenly, as a new grad, you are responsible for working in harmony with other nurses, doctors, nurse’s aides, lab technicians, unit clerks (the heart of every floor that you learn quickly to worship) and others on the health care team. The fact is, health care is a team sport and the sooner that nursing students can put this principle into practice, the better.

While you are still in nursing school, make a concerted effort to take the blinders off and observe how the finely tuned (most of the time) environment operates in hospitals, nursing homes, and other clinical settings. Each facility is different and there are valuable lessons to be learned in each of your clinical locations.

For instance, I learned during my nursing home rotation how the top priority of all the nurses and health care workers is maintaining a “homey” feel; it’s all for one and one for all when assisting residents (not patients) without such a strict “my patient versus your patient” delineation of care. In the fast paced settings of hospitals, however, the nurse is essentially the CEO of a care team for each patient.

Some savvy nursing schools are now implementing programs that teach nursing students how to work with other members of the health care team. Whether your school offers such an approach or not, this is still a learning experience that you can seek out for yourself that will ultimately give you an edge after graduation.