Earlier this year I started a career change by leaving my office job and starting work as a nursing assistant at a hospital part time while going back to school for nursing. Right now I'm doing pre-reqs for an Accelerated BSN program.
I've been working as an nursing assistant/aide for 4 months, and overall I like it and find it rewarding to help people, but I've been trying to put my finger on what makes it so frustrating to me... I think is is the feeling that I'm always behind schedule, and am not keeping up or doing everything I need to do.
Does that feeling ever go away? Do RNs experience the same feeling that I do as an aide? Would better time management techniques help this? Does anyone else deal with this same type of thing?
I do usually get my work and charting done on time and have not received any negative comments on my work from my manager - I think it's more of the feeling of always being behind that gets to me.
I am a "Type A," firstborn, perfectionist type of personality (ISTJ for anyone who is familiar with Myers Briggs) so I know that's part of it for sure. I'm just not sure if it gets better (or worse!) as an RN or if it's something I'd have to live with in nursing.
All of this is making me consider a different kind of health career that might be better suited to my personality - perhaps clinical lab technician.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I appreciate it!
My analogy for it is that I'm jogging behind a bus that's just pulling away, and my hand is reaching out, just 2-3 feet from the bus. The feeling gets a little better, but you have to prioritize. I'm in a LTC/rehab facility, and I rarely finish 'everything I'm supposed to do', but I usually get all of the most *important* tasks done, and as many of the less-important ones I can do. But of course, every single shift is different.
Unfortunately, my opinion is that it does not totally go away working at the bedside in the hospital, LTC, or Home Health. Being very organized does help, but other things put a monkey wrench into that too. Good luck!
The feeling will eventually go away as you learn to anticipate what's needed better and to manage your time skills better. These skills just take a long, long time to learn through hands on experience. It will get better for you with time but there will still always be those nights when you feel like you just can't get everything done. I have known only a couple of nurses in 40 years as an RN that were organized from the very beginning of their first job. The rest took months to get a good handle on time management skills. It will get better, I promise.
My analogy for it is that I'm jogging behind a bus that's just pulling away, and my hand is reaching out, just 2-3 feet from the bus. The feeling gets a little better, but you have to prioritize.
That's a good (and funny) way to put it! Thanks for sharing :-)
Unfortunately, my opinion is that it does not totally go away working at the bedside in the hospital, LTC, or Home Health. Being very organized does help, but other things put a monkey wrench into that too. Good luck!
One of the things that attracted me to nursing is the variety of setting we can work in, so maybe in the future, if I can't get this "behind" feeling to a manageable level, I can look to areas other than the ones you mentioned (although that's admittedly a big sector of nursing) :-) Thanks!
The feeling will eventually go away as you learn to anticipate what's needed better and to manage your time skills better. These skills just take a long, long time to learn through hands on experience. It will get better for you with time but there will still always be those nights when you feel like you just can't get everything done. I have known only a couple of nurses in 40 years as an RN that were organized from the very beginning of their first job. The rest took months to get a good handle on time management skills. It will get better, I promise.
Thanks for the *realistic* encouragement! It's good to know it will get better, even though there will still be some rough shifts. Thanks!
It partly went away for me. Depends on the unit, the shift... Part of the problem is that there will always be more work to be done, it's not like a desk job where you, say, analyse a group of documents, write a report on those and your assignment is done. People will continually have needs that we will continue to fulfill for the duration of the shift and they will carry over to next shift, etc. This is continuity of care and it is just the nature of the beast.
The rest, for me was 70â„… prioritizing / 30â„… becoming more laid back. I work in a cardiac ICU and our patients go from 'had chest pain, nothing was found, perfectly fine' to 'in septic/cariogenic shock'.. My current priorities go :
1) patient will die if this is not done OR patient will negatively progress if this is not done ; I.e. addressing immediate emergent issues (breathing/circulation/neuro)
1a) if necessary, assisting physician during procedures although if said procedure isn't urgent, I ask if it can wait until my other tasks are done
2) patients basic needs are met : clean, fed (if applicable), safe (adequate positioning, turning...)
3) the routine : giving out non emergent meds on time, during routine dressing changes per protocol, addressing family questions, rounds...
4) me! Drinking enough water, having time to go to the bathroom, taking a lunch break
5) over and beyond call of duty : doing something when I have the time either for a patient or getting stuff done for the unit (sorting, organising..)
I am a "Type A," firstborn, perfectionist type of personality (ISTJ for anyone who is familiar with Myers Briggs) so I know that's part of it for sure. I'm just not sure if it gets better (or worse!) as an RN or if it's something I'd have to live with in nursing.
I am you, you are me. We are never satisfied with anything unless it has been micromanaged to death. You're probably doing a great job but as a nursing assistant you don't have as much responsibility as you think you should have (or can handle). Keep working at it and get through nursing school. I assume you have an attention to detail that will make you a wonderful nurse!
Personally, the nagging feeling of always being behind and never seeming 'caught up' never really disappeared for me until I left direct patient care to work a job away from the bedside.
I've been a nurse for 4 years and that feeling has never gone away. My time management and deligation skills have gotten light years better and It helps me to remember that patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one I have in mind. Additionally, that I have 12 hours to get it done.
Specializes in Cardiac/Transplant ICU, Critical Care.
Unfortunately, only the Tincture of Time and experience will help abate this feeling. You and I are very similar in that we want to get everything done. But IMHO I think the best thing to do to help with time management is to make a list of things that are ABSOLUTELY must do and knock those things out first and then move down the line of less important things. The hospital is a 24 hour a day business that never closes, so if something needs to get done that is not so important, the next shift can do it.
Just last night I had an ECMO patient to start the shift and maybe an hour into it my Thoracic Attending comes sprinting down the hall and says "I need a Perfusionist and ECMO! We have a patient dying in the ED!". I left my patient in the caring hands of my coworkers to help insert the ECMO in the trauma bay and to help the ED nurses optomize the patient's hemodynamics and oxygenation until we got good flow. It was a blood bath and a cluster because a majority of the ED MDs and RNs had never seen anything like it and looked like deer in headlights.
I was tied up for a solid 4 hours with ECMO insertion, CT scan, bringing the patient up to my unit, then titrating pressors, fluid resuscitating, rapid transfusing, stabilizing and then revising the cannulation sights to turn it from VA ECMO to VVA ECMO until I could return to my patient. Luckily my coworkers are rockstars and managed my patient while I was gone!
Sometimes you just have to prioritize and figure out what is truly important and make sure that you accomplish that, and then the rest can fall into place. It will get better with time, but just realize that there are times that you are unable to do EVERYTHING and that is okay. It really is up to you whether you want to continue and proceed, but know that this job can be extremely stressful but infinitely rewarding
djh123
1,101 Posts
My analogy for it is that I'm jogging behind a bus that's just pulling away, and my hand is reaching out, just 2-3 feet from the bus. The feeling gets a little better, but you have to prioritize. I'm in a LTC/rehab facility, and I rarely finish 'everything I'm supposed to do', but I usually get all of the most *important* tasks done, and as many of the less-important ones I can do. But of course, every single shift is different.