For real - it's OK! I am a new nurse as well, and I also started-out on a medical/tele floor. From hospital to hospital it varies how long the tele class will be - I've heard anywhere from 2 days to 6 weeks. My class was 3-4 hours, once a week for 6 weeks (this worked-out great, by the way). At the end of the course we all had to take a test in order to get our tele certification, and that was followed by another orientation separate from floor orientation just on tele. I knew I was working toward my tele cert., so while I was precepting I also learned as much as I could about tele.
Also, at our institution, you're just not alone with your strips. If you're unsure of something you always run it by another nurse, your charge nurse, an ICU nurse or all of the above. Usually people just need another set of eyes to confirm what they're seeing, and when we think somebody is doing something dangerous we call the ICU nurses and tell them what's up.
Tele can be intimidating, but in my experience most people, even the ones on tele, are pretty stable. We monitor so closely for that one pt who ends-up on our floor with an unstable rhythm they didn't do in the ED, or when someone degenerates into one. So far, in my meager 3 months on the tele floor
, I have yet to see a person code. There was time to react. You should discuss with your preceptor what you should expect - what are the parameters for admission to your floor? At our institution, if a person has certain lab values, VS, or rhythms they go right to ICU for monitoring.
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