Another feeling stupid thread... Need encouragement

Nurses New Nurse

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I am so mad at myself. I have beating myself up all weekend. My husband has to be sick of me saying the same things over and over again. I hate being new! I hate it. I am a brand new nurse. Graduated in February. I've been on the floor 2 weeks right now doing postpartum (mom & baby). I feel totally stupid and incompetent. I hesitated posting here because I am very aware that cyberspace is really a small place and is not as anonymous as people think, but I really need encouragement so here goes. Oh well maybe my coworkers will anonymously post words of support (or advice or a smack upside the head or whatever it takes for me to be a good nurse.) My assessments suck! I am completely embarrassed for missing things (and I think my preceptor thinks I'm stupid now). I have been playing Taylor Swift's Shake it Off all weekend to get my brain back on track. I am mostly sucking at assessments. Of course that may be because I haven't had much opportunity to do anything else. I have done head to toe assessments, but my school did a lot of focused assessments too. I missed tons of things I should have been covering in a head to toe assessment, but I didn't think of asking. I forgot some obvious steps in my assessment that I should not have missed. Also I can't hear heart murmurs on newborns to save my life right now (working on that). Struggling with telling what's abnormal on newborns in head to toe assessments and hearing "you know what normal looks like" though doesn't help because I guess I realized this week that NO I don't know what normal looks like! I'm a brand new nurse. So, what I did all weekend was look at pictures, tons of pictures of newborns, variations of normal, and abnormal. I listened to heart murmurs until my head hurt (and still not sure if I can recognize one). My husband assures me that I just graduated from school and I should be making mistakes right now and that's why I have a preceptor. All that being said, I want to do a good job. I don't like looking stupid. I don't want my preceptor to think I'm incompetent. I don't care if she thinks I'm good at this point, just not that I'm a complete moron. I don't think they orient a lot of new grads on this floor. Please gals and guys support, encouragement, tips for doing better with assessments, tips for not looking like a moron. I'm doing fine with skills and medications thus far. I don't think my time management is horrible, but assessments need serious work and that I know is the biggest part of nursing. I really, really want to do a good job. I want my third week on the floor to go better than the first two. Thanks.

I'm going to remind you of what I was told when I was a brand new graduate, struggling in my first nursing job 35 years ago: Your nursing education, as difficult as it was, gives you only enough knowledge and skills to enter the field. At least 60% of the education you need to functions smoothly on your current unit is yet to come. And it will come, but you need to be more patient with yourself. Instead of tallying up your mistakes, why not keep a list of new key points you've learned each day? As long as you keep learning, you're going in the right direction, even if you're not going as fast as you'd like to.

Nursing instructors never say this, but, when you make an error, 9 times out of 10 it's not going to hurt the patient. If you forgot to check someone's episiotomy, just go back in and check it when you do remember, and eventually it will become second nature. If you can't hear a heart murmur, ask someone else for a second opinion. Even the best experienced nurses have to do that occasionally.

Most nurses will tell you, "It's not the ones who require a lot of help and input that worry me. It's the ones who think they know it all, even when they don't." It's true. Every last one of us has made mistakes, some of them big enough or dumb enough to cringe over. As long as you correct your mistakes promptly, learn from them, and don't allow them to paralyze you with insecurity, you'll be fine. Just be patient, and do your reasonable best, and you'll eventually get there.

Thanks. I wish my coworkers and management felt the same way. Apparently they do not usually hire new grads on my floor. I am really trying. It's been a hard month. I can feel I'm under a microscope and I am pretty sure that I have some coworkers gossiping about me. Not a wonderful feeling. Every day I stick out is another day of experience under my belt so I'm going to keep plugging along and sticking it out no matter what. To be honest I am no longer feeling "stupid", but I am feeling frustrated. I am trying really hard to have a positive attitude at work because expressing that I'm frustrated just seems to have more people looking down on me. That of course makes me more frustrated... Anyhow, hopefully I'll have a more positive update down the road. I hope they will give me enough time to figure things out. I'm going to keep asking questions everywhere I can until I can start pulling this all together by myself.

Specializes in ER, cardiac, addictions.

Well, it's also possible that the unit you work on has a dysfunctional environment. That's a management issue, and there's little you can do about it, except put up with it (or switch jobs, if you get thoroughly tired of it).

I was a new graduate on a very busy med/surg unit in a big teaching hospital. I stuck it out for 6 months. The manager kept telling me I needed to get more organized; I needed to work faster; I needed to come in early (but not clock in, which was a borderline illegal expectation on her part) and get ready for the shift so I could hit the ground running. I had good orientation there, but I constantly felt like a bumbling idiot, whereas the other new graduate seemed to sail through orientation, coolly and efficiently.

Other circumstances caused me to leave that hospital and go back to one in my own community after six months of anguish and frustration. I dreaded it, because my new job required me to take an even bigger patient load. But what I found was that the new job was much less stressful. Why? Because my coworkers were more supportive; because my manager spent more time building me up than tearing me down; and because I'd actually learned more than I thought at the other job.

I also learned, on the last day of my old position, that my experienced coworkers considered the cool, efficient new graduate to be "cocky," and predicted she was going to have trouble as a result of her overconfidence. I'd never suspected they felt this way about her, maybe because I was focusing so hard on my own shortcomings that I couldn't see anyone else's.

So, whatever happens, keep plugging away, and try not to focus on how you look to others. That's a natural reaction for a conscientious new graduate to have, maybe because nursing school doesn't teach us that there is a big difference between minor mistakes and major ones. (I remember almost bursting into tears, as a new graduate, when a patient's IV ran dry. Sounds ridiculous, but in the nursing school image of perfect nurses, IVs never run dry. I felt like a complete failure!) As long as you learn from your mistakes, consult a coworker (or the physician) if you don't fully understand an order or procedure, and never let yourself get sloppy or careless, you'll most likely do very well.

(But it will take a lot more than a few weeks, especially if you're starting out in a specialty field!)

Specializes in PACU, pre/postoperative, ortho.

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You could also keep a tiny check list behind your badge of the steps you need to take, or even write directly onto a clipboard. Either way, before long you'll get into a routine.

This is what worked for me when I first started & found that when I went to chart assessments, I had missed things. I put together a to do list for my assessments & taped it to my clipboard. That way, before I left the pt's room, I could scan over my list briefly to be sure I hadn't skipped anything. Before I knew it (maybe 3-4 wks?) my routine was established & I no longer needed my cheat sheet.

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