Five months as a nurse already..

[KMEC2525]

yeah i am a new nurse, it's been five months since i transitioned over from nursing assistant to nurse, i am continuing my education but right now i am a lpn and i work on a telemetry floor and i have been broken into nursing very well.. on my first week alone, i had a patient who wouldn't wake up so a rapid response was called, and i was totally freaking out, i felt so helpless, i just stood there and when someone needed supplies i ran and got them. it's much harder for me to accept a different role since i have been working at this place for four years but i used to be a nursing assistant, today i had eight patients and one of them was on a cardizem drip, another was receiving two units packed red blood cells, and the other was confused and had a feeding tube he kept playing with, we were getting patients left and right and it was three o clock in the afternoon and i had yet to sit down and have a break let alone go to the bathroom, i never really imagined in nursing school how hard it is to do this job!! i am exhaused tonight i work a twelve hour shift from seven am to seven pm and it's a long day. but as i go along i am learning more and more things about cardiac nursing in general, just have to keep telling myself to breathe and relax..

[dorselm]

I appreciate reading this because it lets me know what I have to look forward to when I'm finished with school which is four months from now. I want to work in CCU so I too will have a lot to learn about the cardiovascular system and telemetry. There's a good thread on the specialty tab for CCU. It has a bunch of websites that may help you. Please keep updating your progress because I know it will get better and it will give me and other newbies something positive to look forward too.