Anxious, discouraged, ready to quit

[Jaynie_Marie]

I graduated my ADN program last May and was immediately blessed by receiving a job offer from the facility where I worked as a CNA during school...I accepted the job and loved working there! However, due to family reasons, I had to relocate at the end of the year and was unable to continue working at that facility. I received and accepted a job offer working in OB (day shift with three 12 hour shifts a week and three call days a month)...being that I did not have a full year of nursing experience yet, I am receiving the new grad orientation period of six months (I have two months left). I loved my OB clinicals in school and was able to do my transitions/practicum in OB before graduation - I thought that OB was where I wanted to be. But it has turned out to be something different...something completely different! I absolutely dread the days that I have to go into work - I can hardly sleep the night before, I often get myself so worked up that I am almost sick to my stomach with anxiety. I am so extremely overwhelmed while I am there that it is not uncommon for me to want to stop and cry or want to just leave during my shift; I know I need the experience, but I find myself not wanting the complicated labors, the deliveries, c-sections, or triages...I am actually extremely excited when someone else gets those patients, because it means that I did not get them. When I leave at the end of my shift, I either cry most of the way home or cry myself to sleep at night on my husband's shoulder...not because I'm worried I did something wrong, but because the stress and anxiety from the day has built up so much that I have no other way to release it. It's not the knowledge or the skills of the job that is causing this - I am getting and understanding what is going on with the patients I have (although I still have much to learn) and I can care for them at a level beyond where I am in my orientation, but I just don't do many things fast enough...I know this because it has been shared with me by the nurses I work with. However, while the nurses I work with tell me that they would prefer me to ask questions when I don't know something, they are also not very receptive to questions. I know that part of what I am feelinging is that I am still learning how to be a nurse instead of a nursing student, and that I am learning to care for a new patient population...but to me this seems to go beyond that! It is like I have lost my love for nursing, I do not enjoying in OB, I see few friendly faces at work, am constantly being criticized for not being fast enough at many tasks, and am constantly hearing about other nurses who went through the new grad orientation and were 'amazing!' It is flowing over into my personal life...even now I am sitting here on my day off crying just at the thought of work. The 12 hour shifts wear me out so much that I am basically useless the next day (especially if I work two or three in a row), it is hard to get stuff done at home because on days when I do have energy everything is screaming out at me that it needs to be done, I have little time with my husband due to not being on a similar schedule as him, and I am just sooo tired all the time. Nursing employment in my location is basically only available at this hospital, and transfers to a new unit are only allowed after one year of employment with no exceptions. Even though it won't look great on a resume, I am ready to quit just to save my own sanity!

[setsuna92]

I can definitely empathize with you. I too felt the exact same way. It sounds as though you may have developed depression with anxiety along the way. I LOVED my pedi floor, but my depression got in the way of me succeeding. I quit 6 months in (as a new grad). I found another job in a mental health facility as a tobacco cessation specialist. I'm happier now, but still experience depressive symptoms. My recommendation to you, is to do what you have to do. If you have another job lined up, then that's great. If not, and you need this job, get help. Counseling and medication can make a total u-turn on your situation. You can even turn to you employee assistance program and they can help too.

[kimwarren72]

Many years ago I worked in a nursing home as an LPN and returned to school to become an RN for the sole purpose of working in OB. I did not want to do anything else and had the rest of my career as a nurse wrapped around that notion. Well sure enough I finished RN school and landed a job in OB. It was the most traumatizing time of my career. I wanted so badly to learn and constantly asked questions and volunteered to take care of the hardest patients. The patients were not the problem. The problem was the doctors and nurses. I had never been treated so badly in my life and was constantly called stupid for asking anything. And all this was during my "orientation". Needless to say I lasted three months and returned to skilled nursing to eventually become the Director of Nursing I am today. Like you I left that hospital every day and cried the entire 45 minute drive home and wanted to quit nursing. The point is if you are that miserable do what ever you have to do to secure employment elsewhere, turn in a notice and leave. As I found out it is not worth giving up what you went to school for nor is it worth going through the stress you are right now. You will thank yourself in the end. Take that from experience.