Hey y'all. I've been a nurse for almost 9 months now and I'm seriously considering leaving the profession altogether. I graduated in December of 2018 and was ecstatic when I got a position as a new grad RN in a med surg residency program starting July of 2019. Packed up all my things and moved three hours away to a very rural community knowing no one.
From the moment I started, I struggled heavily, mostly due to anxiety which I was clinically diagnosed with two years ago and take meds for. I made a lot of mistakes and was constantly on the radar of my nurse educator and supervisor. Two months later, I got called in to my boss's office and she let me go over lying to my preceptor over charting something which I didn't. They felt as if they couldn't trust me anymore.
My options were get fired or be forced to resign. I was devastated. Moved back home to my parent's house and began looking for a new position.
Luckily, I landed another job in a psychiatric rehabilitation facility. Even before starting nursing school, mental health was my passion. I knew I wanted to work psych in the long term. I started this position late October of 2019 and lasted 3 1/2 months until Valentines day. I worked NOC's and was the only licensed staff for that shift. I was overwhelmed, had virtually no support and had to deal with toxic coworkers.
On February 12th, I made the mistake of covering an AM shift and was responsible for pulling meds from a med cart in sheets the old fashioned way and giving them to 50 patients. The next day my boss found out I made a ton of med errors and I seriously thought I was going to be fired on the spot. He gave me another chance to my surprise, but I had had enough and decided to quit.
My current position is in an acute psych facility which I started per diem in January of 2020. Here I feel like I have tons of support, charge nurses who are constantly checking up on me. I've only been called into my boss's office once in 5 months over messing up charting. I feel as if this is less hectic than my last job but I am very unhappy with it.
Psych nursing is not what I glorified it to be. What I thought psych nursing was vs what it really is is not what I expected it to be. What I feel like I really want to do is more in the line of social work or clinical psychology.
On top of all this I screw up constantly and have this fear of getting fired every time I step into the hospital. Today, I made a med error and sort of freaked out and stormed outside the patient's room after realizing I gave meds to the wrong patient. My coworkers tried to comfort me but now I feel like they feel like I can't be trusted.
I'm starting to think nursing is just not for me.
I'm fed up, burned out and I've come to the point where I just don't care anymore and I feel numb. I've had 3 jobs in 9 months which says a lot.
What school did you graduate from? It might be that your training wasn’t that complete and remedial education can really help you. There are also a lot of online psychology programs if you are not in debt from nursing school.
What school did you graduate from? It might be that your training wasn’t that complete and remedial education can really help you. There are also a lot of online psychology programs if you are not in debt from nursing school.
OP passed the boards. Doesn't make a whit of difference which school they went to. The first year of nursing is really HARD. Maybe the OP needs to learn coping strategies for struggling; maybe they really need to leave. But to blame the school for having a rough time the first year...that's crazy. And then again with the passive-agressive "support" ; "If you're not in too much debt....."
Hey y'all. I've been a nurse for almost 9 months now and I'm seriously considering leaving the profession altogether. I graduated in December of 2018 and was ecstatic when I got a position as a new grad RN in a med surg residency program starting July of 2019. Packed up all my things and moved three hours away to a very rural community knowing no one.
From the moment I started, I struggled heavily, mostly due to anxiety which I was clinically diagnosed with two years ago and take meds for. I made a lot of mistakes and was constantly on the radar of my nurse educator and supervisor. Two months later, I got called in to my boss's office and she let me go over lying to my preceptor over charting something which I didn't. They felt as if they couldn't trust me anymore.
My options were get fired or be forced to resign. I was devastated. Moved back home to my parent's house and began looking for a new position.
Luckily, I landed another job in a psychiatric rehabilitation facility. Even before starting nursing school, mental health was my passion. I knew I wanted to work psych in the long term. I started this position late October of 2019 and lasted 3 1/2 months until Valentines day. I worked NOC's and was the only licensed staff for that shift. I was overwhelmed, had virtually no support and had to deal with toxic coworkers.
On February 12th, I made the mistake of covering an AM shift and was responsible for pulling meds from a med cart in sheets the old fashioned way and giving them to 50 patients. The next day my boss found out I made a ton of med errors and I seriously thought I was going to be fired on the spot. He gave me another chance to my surprise, but I had had enough and decided to quit.
My current position is in an acute psych facility which I started per diem in January of 2020. Here I feel like I have tons of support, charge nurses who are constantly checking up on me. I've only been called into my boss's office once in 5 months over messing up charting. I feel as if this is less hectic than my last job but I am very unhappy with it.
Psych nursing is not what I glorified it to be. What I thought psych nursing was vs what it really is is not what I expected it to be. What I feel like I really want to do is more in the line of social work or clinical psychology.
On top of all this I screw up constantly and have this fear of getting fired every time I step into the hospital. Today, I made a med error and sort of freaked out and stormed outside the patient's room after realizing I gave meds to the wrong patient. My coworkers tried to comfort me but now I feel like they feel like I can't be trusted.
I'm starting to think nursing is just not for me.
I'm fed up, burned out and I've come to the point where I just don't care anymore and I feel numb. I've had 3 jobs in 9 months which says a lot.
Opinions?
To openly discuss it is a good start.
They have great suggestions here for all of us. Slowing down helps you calm down and be more detail oriented.Nursing is such a broad field.It is nice to start strong by reading more books such as fundamentals of nursing, pharmacology and explore on our specialty as we find our niche.And at the clinical area, we need to observe the standard procedure, practice what is safe and later on our speed will just improve as we keep evaluating our performance and mastering the prioritization skills as we keep doing it.It takes months to a year to get more comfortable.You passed NCLEX for a reason...that means u know the basic safe practice.Sometimes, as a new nurse we overthink and overanalyze and that we complicate things.Try to reach out to your friends that you are comfortable working with.There is genius in you.
Specializes in LTC,Med Surg, HH,CM-BC,DON,Nurse Consultant.
Thank you! Some of these comments have been so rude and unthoughtful ! It may be the setting she’s practicing in or the shift . I don’t believe she should walk away so freely just yet.
As a first year nurse I strongly recommend you slow down and pay attention to the medications and which medications belong to which patient. I have made 2 med errors in my first year. The first one I gave the wrong dose for that specific time frame and just gave the smaller dose that was due at 00:00. At 0600. The second med error was giving the medication the ring route. I gave a medication that is originally used as ophthalmic in the eyes instead of sublingual. I totally missed the order in the MAR that said “Sublingual, Do not give in Eyes” a total mistake that was easily missed because it had happened before. But because of lack of communication It happened again with me. I immediately told my charge nurse and manager and even cried to them because of my mistake. My last mistake that happened was a patients IV. It had infiltrated most likely when I got on shift from the pervious shift. However the patient was already puffy from edema and Intubated. I checked the IV site where fluids were running in and. I didn’t see any leaking in that IV not swelling at a specific point that indicated infiltration like I did with a different IV site. Let’s just say the swelling got worse and had noticed the patient was getting blisters on the arm. I immediately knew something was wrong. I stopped the fluids and contacted the provider and was told that the IV site was infiltrated because I couldn’t get blood return (mind you I have checked for blood return in previous patient’s IV’s and got nothing so it doesn’t immediately indicate infiltration) total accident and even more so because the patient couldn’t tell me something was wrong. I felt terrible. I elevated the arm on the pillow and charge nurse knew the situation. I’ve never seen nor heard of something like that happen before. Because I never learned it in nursing school. I’m very afraid I’ll end up getting a lawsuit from the patient’s family if something bad were to happen to that patient’s extremity. Moral of the story is I’ll never let a mistake like that happen again just like I haven’t let the mistake of a med error happen again. Nurses are human and make mistakes. The key takeaway is to learn from them to better your practice.
I think also that nursing school glosses over the truth of the job. I was working an agency job in a skilled facility one day with a gaggle of nursing students being led around by their smiling instructor. She offered the supervised assistance of the students with my case load-I eagerly accepted since she was approved by the facility and the manager had already told me to let she and the students do what they could.
Well after taking 10 minutes to give one medication to one person (and that person had at least 6 meds due) they wandered off for some other pursuit. I had a complex dressing change coming up and she stated that it would be perfect for her students to perform. Yay! said I, thinking that by myself it was easily a 10-15 minute job. Well, I went to gather them, they started to follow and the instructor called them back and told them it was time for their break!
Oh they went away smiling like the joke was on me. I know that's not what they were thinking, but that's how it felt. None of them learned what nursing was really like that day, it seemed simple the way it was presented.
I think also that nursing school glosses over the truth of the job. I was working an agency job in a skilled facility one day with a gaggle of nursing students being led around by their smiling instructor. She offered the supervised assistance of the students with my case load-I eagerly accepted since she was approved by the facility and the manager had already told me to let she and the students do what they could.
Well after taking 10 minutes to give one medication to one person (and that person had at least 6 meds due) they wandered off for some other pursuit. I had a complex dressing change coming up and she stated that it would be perfect for her students to perform. Yay! said I, thinking that by myself it was easily a 10-15 minute job. Well, I went to gather them, they started to follow and the instructor called them back and told them it was time for their break!
Oh they went away smiling like the joke was on me. I know that's not what they were thinking, but that's how it felt. None of them learned what nursing was really like that day, it seemed simple the way it was presented.
Semi-rant over.
Yes I totally agree! In nursing school we only had 8hr clinical and we didn’t had to any true hard work done by real nurses, we just observed and it seemed like fun! But now I am an RN I know there is so much work & planning that goes behind the scene
Specializes in Being a slightly better then average student.
Well maybe clinical work isn't for you. If you have a passion for nursing as a practice in general why not do something like grad school and end up teaching or something. Some companies hire nurses to help keep the staff healthy and safe on the job. Or get in to the research side of the coin. You dont have to do clinical work, I learn more and more all the time about the vast array of nursing careers. Drug rehabs, the jail, community outreach, methadone clinics, a school nurse. Some of those have a clinical feel, but still distinctly different then classical ideas of clincal work. The undergraduate program director at my university told me just the other day. When you get your first nursing gigs, if you are working at a job and realize it's not for you, bail dont get stuck on a path that doesn't suit you. Find your passion, it's there, job availability for nurses are crazy, you'll find work, and work you like!
Specializes in Med Surg, Tele, Geriatrics, home infusion.
On 5/18/2020 at 12:16 PM, Marc Goodman said:
I am an experienced Psychiatric RN with over 10 years of experience, so I'd like to offer some thoughts.
It sounds like it would be helpful to break some of your thoughts and member responses into categories. From a brief perspective it looks like its important to look at your mental health specifically, how most novice RNs cope, system issues that are effecting you, and your relationship with coworkers and opportunities for mentorship.
Your mental health
A few members have recommended some strategies to cope with stress. Distract, self soothe, utilize self care, mindfulness techniques. These are components of DBT therapy. Learning a bit about DBT will be helpful for you as well as your practice. Behavior tech has a great online training if you can have it paid for as a conference. It is a bit pricey. A DBT workbook I used to use might also be very helpful (and less expensive) ISBN-13: 978-1684034581.
If you're taking medications for anxiety I would be very careful to be working with a skilled psychopharmacologist. I've seen so many hodge podge inappropriate med regimens over the years that are doing the opposite of helping.
It sounds like you're self flagellating over giving the wrong formulation of the same medication (zydis vs regular tablet). Yes, its technically a med error, but not harmful to the patient and a mistake easily made. Is it possible that you're depressed and only able to see the glass as half full?
I would be reasonably depressed and anxious in your shoes.
How other novice RNs cope
So, you've been through from two other jobs after nursing school?
I think most people would feel self defeated. I know I would. In fact, I'd be a basket case.
I had a few errors starting out because I was anxious and rushing. Others members have responded with similar advice, slow down. Although, I remember having angry psych patients lined up for their meds so they can go out to smoke. Think of having them wait as them building their distress tolerance skills. If they're upset now, they'll really be upset when they get 150 of seroquel instead of wellbutrin.
System Issues
Other members have identified that you do not have a bar code scanning system.
Prior to starting to use the scanner I was always very careful with the "5 rights", but after we switched over to scanning we realized that we were probably all having med errors in the past that we didn't even know about. You're realizing your med errors. I bet your coworkers are doing the same thing and have no clue that they make mistakes all the time.
It sounds like what you're doing is called Team Nursing. I've never done it, but medicating 50 patients sounds ridiculous. I've always done what I think is called Primary Nursing. I have my 4-6 patients and handle their meds, behavior, medical issues, supportive psychotherapy, etc. I know their medications and what to look out for (emerging mania, sedation, orthostasis, clinical improvement). If they're being uptitrated on seroquel or starting on trazodone, I'm looking out for orthostasis and reminding them to change positions slowly/staying hydrated, ringing a bell and waiting for me to avoid falls. Its madness to uncouple the care of the patient from medication administration. So, this way I more or less remember what they're on which reduces the chance for a med error.
With coronavirus we've had to cancel groups, close all public rooms, and ask the patients to stay in their rooms as much as possible. Having patients line up in the hallway for medication would also be unfeasible and dangerous at this time.
Perhaps if rates go up in your area you can be a leader in change management and help launch a primary nursing model.
Relationships with coworkers
This is the keystone.
If your coworkers feel you're providing unsafe care, they're going to run to your boss. You're medicating their patients and they have to deal with the consequences of your actions (either patient behavior or poor health outcomes). They might focus on their own risk for assault given what they think your actions are. This is serious business.
See if you can engage your colleagues in professional conversations about providing excellent patient care. This will increase their feelings of clinical competence towards you. If appropriate, engage in non clinical conversation when the opportunity presents itself. Everyone appreciates some levity. Grab a drink with someone after work..If your coworkers like you, they won't run to your boss as easily. This will also give you the ability to develop a mentoring relationship.
NewRN'16, ADN, RN
204 Posts
Ouch. I hope the OP doesn't blindly take anyone's advice , especially yours.
Smh