Any nurses out there graduate knowing everything?

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I am just wondering if any one who is a nurse now graduated and felt like you "knew everything". Did school prepare you for the nursing world? Right now I'm studying for an exam and am feeling extremely overwhelmed to the point where I don't even want to be a nurse. I feel this way sometimes when I get overloaded with information. I love being in clinical, but I just cannot understand how we are supposed to remember all of these diseases and what they do and what meds they are treated with, and then complications, and interactions. I'm really freaking out. Does all of this knowledge come with years of nursing or am I just an idiot?

Specializes in PACU, pre/postoperative, ortho.

Even your instructors don't know everything! (Although they seem to...) It was so gratifying to me when an instructor would tell us in class about something new they had learned or would say "I don't know; let me look that up". I had one instructor at clinical who was quick to say when she was seeing something new & learned along side me with the staff RN showing us both.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

i graduated feeling like i knew nothing. but we have had a number of new grads over the past few years come to work thinking they know everything. makes them real hard to teach.

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Wanna know a secret? Even doctors use the internet or old textbooks to research stuff they don't know. First time I saw that, I was surprised. Now I don't feel so bad for not knowing everything.

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Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.

I certainly did.

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Specializes in Emergency, Telemetry, Transplant.
I am just wondering if any one who is a nurse now graduated and felt like you "knew everything". Did school prepare you for the nursing world? Right now I'm studying for an exam and am feeling extremely overwhelmed to the point where I don't even want to be a nurse. I feel this way sometimes when I get overloaded with information. I love being in clinical, but I just cannot understand how we are supposed to remember all of these diseases and what they do and what meds they are treated with, and then complications, and interactions. I'm really freaking out. Does all of this knowledge come with years of nursing or am I just an idiot?

I am answering before I ready any of the other replies, so sorry if I repeat some thoughts. I knew that I did not know everything thing when I graduated, but after a week of my first job as a GN, I realized I knew a heck of a lot less that I thought I did. You will learn a lot (!) on the job (I know that I certainly did), and after I moved from an inpatient unit to the ER last year I felt like I was going through the process again. Truth is, even after years (and years) of nursing, you will continue to learn something every day....at least you should.

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