Did you wait to pick up OT?

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Hi!

I am a new nurse in an ICU. I just started working there about three months ago and got off orientation a few weeks ago. I was wondering: how long did you wait as a new nurse before you started picking up overtime shifts? My unit offers plenty of overtime shifts and I really enjoy going to work. However, I'm still new and it is still very scary to be a nurse on my own, so I just wanted to get a little insight.

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Hey! I am an ICU new grad too but still have another month of orientation. I plan on picking up extra shifts for OT immediately! I feel like it will help me learn quicker....and I can also understand the feeling of being new and overwhelmed.

We have a lot of dudes leaving for anesthesia school this summer so there are lots of shifts and the OT rate is nice. (:

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

lol I worked a double my second day on the job.

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I didn't wait. I had 90 hours on my first check as a LPN when I first started. Orientation was 3 days and I worked OT right after that .

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Specializes in Tele, Interventional Pain Management, OR.

My first solo shift off orientation was a bonus (OT+) shift, haha. I was scared but I look at extra shifts as additional exposure to the aspects of my job that freak me out the most--I've only been off orientation for about a month.

I don't overdo it, though. My unit is having kinda critical staffing and scheduling issues so I could work almost every day if I wanted. While the money would be great, I acknowledge that I need days off to recharge and tend to the non-nursing parts of my life.

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Specializes in Oncology.

I worked a ton of OT right away and it helped me to get comfortable on the unit much sooner than the others I started with.

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Specializes in General Surgery, NICU.

I started out in med-surg and remember my unit had a lot of OT available but felt nervous about picking up extra time. I think about 3 to 4 months after I got off orientation I started to pick up OT, and then I did a lot of it!

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I picked up a ton of OT as soon as I could. If you want to do it, just do it. The more you work, the more you will learn and get in your groove and start to feel comfortable.

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Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/LDRP/Ortho ASC.

I started cranking out overtime as soon as I was off orientation as a new grad. I got tons more exposure to new things and I feel like it helped me learn faster.

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Specializes in Dialysis.

Just don't burn yourself out!

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Specializes in IMC, school nursing.

I graduated in the Stone Age. We had six month orientations because that's how long it took after you graduated to have your license. We then worked day shifts exclusively for a year with NO OT. Nursing is a career, and with the B.S. book centric training with limited clinical experience, I tell new nurses that the first year it is OK to question what you have learned and feel incompetent, you need about 3 years to feel comfortable. Today, there are nurses with 1 year experience orienting new nurses. The hardest part of being new now is you show up on the floor with that license in your hand; the employer wants to get you independent quickly.

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Specializes in Emergency, Trauma, Critical Care.

6 months. I wanted to ensure I wasn't slowing down my coworkers with questions. I also didn't want to burn myself out. I picked up mad OT for a while, and then realized how caustic the work environment was and quit. :p. It's easy to be money hungry early on, but you don't want it to ruin your experience.

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