Becoming a nurse after registration

Published Mar 15, 2008

2 Posts

The first year

Oh my God... So it was very busy, living through all those things I had limited experience in previously. It was stressful, joyful, disappointing and so on, reagarding many aspects of personal development and life, nursing, or social interactions.

I wish I could hop in a timemachine and tell my young-self well before graduation the following lessons I have learned in my first year working as a registered general nurse, who is in addition a foreigner. (So please excuse me for grammatical mistakes :)

Keep on learning. However learning hurts at times, so can non-learning... Choose life, choose lifelong learning, in reference to all fields of your life!

Life life life life life, dying or being dead is really not nice, no matter which (bio-/psycho-/social ) part of the human is involved in the scary deterioration and passing...

So you better live your life and enjoy it. You need to enjoy and love your job, and to develop in all means, to become a good nurse and a good person. Will it hurt? Yes. Can you avoid pain? I doubt. I have an impression, it is not worthwile trying escaping, as pain helps you memorizing the context, however it is up to you how to interpret. You are responsible for your thoughts, behaviour, professional skills-knowledge-fitness, personal failures, (mental) health, so for all your life. If you really want, you can take control over your life. Negative attitude, anxiety, lack of confidence, blaming, denial, etc. is timewasting, but possible to defeat.

Life is short, unlike dying can happen in form of long suffering. You have to learn from being part of these emotionally-demanding states, as your life is definately going to be affected in some ways, even if you do not want to realize this.

You also have to work out successful ways to communicate, be aware: it is more difficult and complicated than as it seems to be for the first glimpse, not necessarily only due to language boundaries and multicultural environment. Communication is the base, the foundation and an objective indicator of the effectivness of team work. And of your work. And of yourself.

You also have to accept that there are things you can not change on your own, no matter how hard you try.

And never forget: patient and your conscience comes first.