It's OK to be nervous, but also be prepared Originally Posted by Paula7 I've been reading some posts from the nurses in their first year and I have to admit, it made me kinda nervous. People talking about hating clinicals and getting yelled at in front of other nurses and errors in charting. . .Is anybody else nervous or sometimes feel...do I really want to do this? I sometimes think that but then I think about how much I want to and can't wait and get really excited. So am I alone out there? 
Some of the posts from the nurses in their first year of nursing make me nervous too. . .and I've been an RN for 30 years! Remember that a lot of what you are reading is about people's
emotions. Nursing, like most courses of study, builds on what you first learn. As you progress in the learning process, the material gets more complicated. In nursing, the more complicated part of it is actually putting it all into practice. The first year(s) out of nursing school are still years of study and learning with more focus on honing your skills of management. This cannot be learned overnight. While nursing school teaches its students all different kinds of management, students, in general, don't get much actual experience at it. In school a student generally has only one or two patients to focus on at a time. It is vastly different when you get a paid job doing this and have 6, 10 or 16 patients whose care you need to manage. Another big difference is that you no longer have your nursing school instructors by your side to provide emotional and job support. You have to replace your instructors with other people. Now, some jobs are going to tell you who those people are (preceptors), and some are not. Where nursing schools have people who are trained educators, places of work, in general, do not. A workplace expects work from it's employees. They are not going to pay you for going down to their medical library (if they have one) and spending an hour reading up on something. You will have to do that on your own time. You went to school to learn nursing on your own time to begin with, so nothing has really changed. Hopefully, everyone learned how to find the answers to questions while they were in school because once you graduate and are on a job this skill becomes extremely valuable. This skill at finding your own answers and seeking out references is a
collegiate activity learned not only in nursing classes, but in all those other required classes that everyone wonders why they have to take. This is why RN nursing occurs at a college level. RNs have to be able to answer the question, "why" all the time and they cannot depend on someone to supply them with the answer. More often than not, they have to find the answer by themselves. No one is going to step forward to volunteer to find it for you. Some new grads are handling this more complicated work well and others are not and recognizing that they are failing at it. There have been discussions over the years about requiring an internship period for new graduate nurses because of the extra supervision and guidance that they need to get well acclimated into hospital nursing.
Half the battle of coping with the first year(s) out of nursing school are your own attitude, your ability to problem solve and knowing where to find resources to help yourself. I believe that a lot of the very frustrated first year people are in situations where they feel they have lost control and are floundering. What they need is guidance and they are just not able to find it, or the guidance they are getting is not adequate or tailored to their individual need. One of the biggest advantages of school clinicals was the chance to go to a post-clinical meeting where all the students discussed their individual experiences for that day. That, unfortunately, is something that is lacking in the orientation of new graduate nurses at their jobs.
As you progress through your prerequisites to get into nursing school see them as learning opportunities. Challenge yourself to find answers to questions you have about something your prof discussed in class. Be serious about term papers even though the subject matter may not be your favorite. It's not the subject of a term paper that is important, but the process of developing the information in the term paper that your profs are looking to impart to you. These are exercises in developing the skill of researching and finding answers that you will be able to apply to
all areas of your life.
Think we can talk some kind multi-billionaire into paying our bills for us? LOL
Being from the point of view of a patient I haven't experienced negativity amongst nurses and doctors. 
I've developed close relationship with the nurses and doctors that I see as a patient, they're awesome! They all rallying behind me to become a nurse! Maybe I should ask each doctor to donate $10,000 towards my nursing education and they can claim it as tax deducible! 
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