Hi. I graduated 8 months ago from an accelerated BSN program. This is my second degree and second professional career. The problem I'm having is that, while I'm book smart, I lack clinical skills.
My first job has been on a med-surg floor. I thought I'd get a broader experience working med-surg. However, what I'm realizing is, at least where I'm at, the job consist mostly of case management. I feel like I'm not getting any clinical skills. Some days I feel like I'm working fast food.
We have an IV team, so I rarely put in an IV (done it only 4 times) or draw blood. I've tried to get in there and do it before the team comes up, but then there's the problem with not having the supplies on hand; also, some IV team nurses tell me they don't want the patient "poked too many times" (even though I limit my tries to 2 MAX and only try on patients who are willing). I've not put in any NG tubes, no caths on women, and there has been no training on reading the telemetry strips (in fact, none of the nurses on my floor know how to do this even though we are considered to have the most heart patients and we have tele monitors at the nurses station...tele is monitored down the hall by techs).
I went ahead and took another job at another hospital in a critical care unit, mainly because I'm rather bored with the current job. I start in 2 weeks. I am now a little nervous about the fact that I haven't done a lot of things that students from community colleges get trained to do.
Any advice? I plan to keep my head up, have a good attitude and not be overtaken by insecurity.
As an aside, one issue my problem taps into is the sense of resentment I have experienced from some nurses who started out as CNAs and worked their way up to RNs or LPNs; I have felt, only from some, that they scoff at my lack of physical skills training. In fact, there is a long-standing belief that the nurses turned out into the community by the community college here are better trained than the nurses turned out by the university. My experience has been that I tend to understand more about the pathophys than the nurses coming from the community colleges. However, my belief is that it is up to the individual nurse and her/his own desire to learn as to whether she/he will understand the patho better, have good clinical skills, etc.; in the long run, it's both education via school and education via experience that make a fine quality anything. But, back to the resentment issue, one LPN that I have to cover, who has been a nurse for 15 years and who I absolutely respect in terms of her clinical judgment and skills, is extremely rude (actually, she's downright mean) to me. I've even asked her, if she wouldn't mind, to please share her knowledge and experience with me because I'd like to learn from her. She only glared in response.
