nervous new grad nurse

Published Apr 2, 2015

1 Post

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share what I'm feeling as a new nurse and want to hear from you and maybe some few words of encouragements as well would be great.

I have been working as a long term care nurse for 5 months now. This is my first job as I am having trouble looking for job at hospitals. Other nurses say it's better to start off with acute nursing as a new nurse to strengthen my assessment skills however this is what I have for now. There are times when I feel nervous because some times the facility will only have 1 RN. At times that 1 RN in the building is me. There are times when I just feel so scared cos RPNs will come to me to ask for my opinion on what to do to a certain resident. Working at LTC when resident's health declines as an RN I have to utilize my assessment skills and decide whether it will beneficial to transfer to hospital or not. I'm nervous because I feel like I don't have strong assessment skills yet because I'm new and need more experience. Other veteran nurses they already know that patient is not doing well just by looking at them. Also I'm also nervous about dealing with difficult familes. I know providing them enough information and listening to what they want are one of the keys. But some families tend to be impatient when I try to find info and think of me as not knowing anything. I'm the kind of nurse who's not afraid to ask questions and to admit that I'm not comfortable into doing certain things. So I don't know am I just thinking too much is this normal.