was flying high....

[Lissacheer87]

i am a new grad and had been doing very well according to all the nurses on my floor. On friday I was called and asked to come in cause they were short...and i regret it now. my patients were great but i felt like i was a bad nurse...one of the things that happend was i had given a blood transfusion to my patient who already had 100 of NS going...and i for some unknown reason didnt turn that down when i gave my transfusion...patient was fine and the charge nurse only said "its just something you learn as you go on" so noone was being mean to me or anything about it but i took it so personally cause i had been doing sooo good. Am i overreacting?!

[Up2nogood RN, RN]

Your charge nurse was right, you will learn as you go. Sometimes the best way to remember things is to make a mistake, then you can honestly look at your practice and see what went wrong.

You're not overreacting, as a new grad (myself included) you tend to put yourself upon a very high pedestal, desparate to be perfect and not make a mistake. It seems new grads have to proove themselves (or feel like they do) to the more experienced nurses. I don't know if this is influenced by the basic cattiness of women or unrealistic nursing programs.

What helped me the most is to stop comparing my practice to other nurses. I'm about 18 months in and still make mistakes (none life threatening). I'm not perfect, just human as we all are.

Please take it easy on yourself and take the chance to learn from your mistakes :)

[Jules A, MSN]

Mistakes happen and this is one of the minor ones, imo. It sounds like your supervisor was supportive so thats cool. Hang in there.

[twentytenRN]

Your patient was unharmed, right?

Don't fret. New nurses have a habit of beating themselves up over this kind of stuff. Next time, maybe you should just say "no" to an extra shift if you're not feeling comfortable with more than your regular number of scheduled shifts. You don't want to burn yourself out before you get started!