2 elements of success at nursing?

[brotherbear]

A lot of times those entering the nursing field through school feel that the clinical skills alone are the key to success in nursing and end up being blind sided by the reality.

Nursing is a polarized field (being that it is dominated by women). It is also a field where stress looms in the air most of the time (because of the existence of people who will die or get sick if you blink wrong).

Do these two factors call for a soft skillset in addition to the clinical skills picked up in school. What is the importance of knowing how to relate to people under stressful conditions? How do you, the reader, being a veteran nurse (or a fairly new nurse) rank good social skills, how about good political skills (yes, the field has an elevated presence of politics).

My opinion is that the ability to related to people under stressful conditions coupled with good social and political skills can be ranked at 60/40 in importance. 40% being the clinical skills. This is because clinical skills can be learned and have a more structured format (i.e. if the patient is choking and is also bleeding at the knee you automatically know to address the choking first), but political and social skills are arts that have to be practiced and practiced in order to be learned by trial/error. Feel free to post your thoughts.

[Medic/Nurse, BSN, RN]

Common Sense will be necessary NO MATTER how book smart you are!

Having good "gut instincts" is gonna be important in emergent/critical care!

You only get these after you have enough "learning experiences!"

Otherwise:

Show up.

Shut up.

Put up.

Just kidding, (a little).

Education is important, but there is NOTHING that will take the place of meaningful experience.

Practice SAFE!

[CRNAorBust]

Learning tasks or learning how to interact with patients and staff can be equally tough. It really depends on what you as a person bring to the table for either. For me I learned nursing well in school but only because i had to do it via reading which is my best way of learning. Learning to actually "do" on the floor was an entirely different story since that to a large extent required auditory learning which was NOT my forte.

The people learning came a bit easier mostly because i am older now (54) but i always had a good sense of humor and was pretty good at being able to put myself in someone else's shoes.

And that's my two cents......

[RNperdiem, RN]

2 elements for success:

1. Realistic expectations: Just about all new grads get the reality check on the first job. After that, having realistic expectations help. This is work. Patients are not there to make you feel good. Bad days happen. Good days happen too. There are no shortcuts to gaining experience and it takes time to develop skill.

2. The ability to change. To learn and grow and not get stuck in a rut.