I noticed this problem at the end of first year. I became a really negative person, hated life, thought everything was unfair, and I'm 100% sure it was because of my first year of nursing.
I did a complete 360 on my negativity the next year, and made many new friends and started my own business while in my second year of nursing. But, I only was able to do this because I started to focus on things outside of nursing. I still get straight As, but my heart is not in it.
Is it just me? Do I just not like nursing? Or does anybody else experience this?
I noticed this problem at the end of first year. I became a really negative person, hated life, thought everything was unfair, and I'm 100% sure it was because of my first year of nursing.
I did a complete 360 on my negativity the next year, and made many new friends and started my own business while in my second year of nursing. But, I only was able to do this because I started to focus on things outside of nursing. I still get straight As, but my heart is not in it.
Is it just me? Do I just not like nursing? Or does anybody else experience this?
Your wording is confusing - I assume you mean nursing school?
My third year of school was my first year in the program. At the beginning, I was diagnosed with one lifelong condition that devastated me. The following May, I'd reached a comfort level with it, but then I had a med reaction that left me useless, terrified, and horribly depressed. That incident led to another diagnosis, epilepsy, which is also lifelong. It was a horrible year, and yes, I felt a very dark cloud in my soul.
It had nothing to do with nursing school, though, except potential impact to a potential career. I urge you to speak with your primary care provider if you are actually still wanting nursing. If you have grown filled with despair BECAUSE of nursing, rethink your options, learn about specialties, use the break between semesters/quarters to decide if this is the right direction for you, or if maybe a certain specialty feels better to you than what you've experienced in your first year. Hospital nursing can be dreary and you may find happiness in the many, many other places nurses can be found.
Please, though, speak with your provider about this.
P.S. About two years in on my job, I lost a large degree of my Muchness and that WAS related to nursing directly. I had enough emotionally heavy patients in a small enough period of time that it just wore down on me. Counseling and antidepressants are my friend.
I almost resemble your description. I still find happiness in nursing sometimes more than my persoanal life. I'm in a great position now of being very experienced in a field I love and believe in which makes for more satisfying days and sometimes flat out fun and joyful. I did not feel that way entering nursing.
That's lovely, I hope to get to that stage in my new specialty.
I'm definitely not more negative. Less enthusiastic, less idealistic. But I probably needed some of that rubbing off. Tougher. More angry because what is expected, what is demanded, can be impossible. Angry that nurses aren't treated better and that because we are mostly a kind, "let's get on with things", "make the best of it" kind of profession we can get really screwed over.
I remember situations where we would be running short-staffed, a nurse would be taken from us for somewhere with even worse staffing and I would still be fielding demand after demand for us to take admissions and to discharge patients asap. Emergencies would happen; students would need to be supported; new starters would need to feel like they hadn't been abandoned; targets would need to met; monthly, daily, hourly audits would need to be completed etc etc. I'm not even mentioning meeting the needs of Dr's and relatives. And somewhere, in the midst of it all, the patients would need to receive compassionate and competent care. After shifts where I worked 14 hours with no breaks, doing my very best to achieve the impossible, I became pretty angry. Not negative, though, just aware that that was what went on behind the scenes.
Why, of course Nursing has made me negative! I was once a positive Individual who merely wanted to help others and Nursing has made me into a cynical, sarcastic son of a biscuit eater!
I blame other People and things for my lot in life! I have no control over what others do or say and it affects me deeply! If everyone and everything was as they and it should be, I'd be okay!
Ouch! I bit my tongue! It's all the fault of Nursing!
LOL I appreciate your sarcasm.
I won't get defensive, because I was literally this stupid last year. I felt unappreciated working for free in a hospital while in school, the course load was insane, I was working 40 hours a week outside of school, and I wanted to blame my attitude on nursing.
It's not Nursing's fault. I fixed my attitude this year, and a lot of good things happened to me.
But for real, my tongue almost fell off because of this stupid program.
This is a tough one to answer. It's like asking me "What came first: the chicken or the egg?"
I think if you ask most people who knew me pre-nursing, I was already a negative person. Of course, I didn't see this as my being negative, but rather I saw it as my living "in the now" and seeing reality. Underneath, I was a total closet optimist, but I'd rather downplay the potential for success than be embarrassed when the outcome isn't as I suspected.
All in all, I think my outlook overall hasn't quite changed, but my outlook on NURSING became an entire different world and continues to change day-to-day.
I went into nursing with the assumption that everyone I encountered wanted my help as much as they needed it and had a vested interest in getting better. This is absolutely not the case. And that was the blow that hit the hardest. Other smaller issues on top of that (inadequate staffing, unsafe assignments, constant paperwork, etc) kept hitting me like little jabs until I finally realized that 2016 Nursing is not Flo Nightingale nursing. It's not that you become more pessimistic or negative, it's simply that now you're seeing the forrest for the trees.
I am not that much negative than just at loss sometimes about how much slack is allowed for like almost everybody else around. When I have to repeat three times in a row what I want in my coffee and still get it done all the way wrong, I am kind of bitter/envy about others living luxurious life where a "sorry" and a free drink is considered to be enough for putting the thing that can almost instantly kill someone into that person's latte. What would happen with me if I miss a patient's allergy and he suffers a bad reaction? Yes.... and I doubt anybody would care that I had at that moment not ONE "customer" at a time but four doctors yelling orders in unison, and four more people to take care of.
Nah, I already thought people were bad and untrustworthy before I became a nurse. It has jaded me though. Nothing surprises me anymore. I come into work one day and read a note on a patient that says "mother arrested last night, baby now in DCF custody" and think "sounds about right."
Definitely has for me. I used to look for and see the best in people, assuming there were good intentions behind whatever boneheaded thing they did or said. Now I am much more likely to look for and see the hidden agenda behind peoples actions and words. I believe that is from years of dealing with unreasonable requests from residents, their families and from my employer.
I also no longer believe honesty is always the best policy, sometimes saying less or nothing is the right way to go for self preservation when an errant honest statement can and does come back to bite you in the butt. Fortunately I learned this before it happened to me after I saw a few good staff members lose their jobs for rocking the boat a little too much.
ixchel
4,547 Posts
Your wording is confusing - I assume you mean nursing school?
My third year of school was my first year in the program. At the beginning, I was diagnosed with one lifelong condition that devastated me. The following May, I'd reached a comfort level with it, but then I had a med reaction that left me useless, terrified, and horribly depressed. That incident led to another diagnosis, epilepsy, which is also lifelong. It was a horrible year, and yes, I felt a very dark cloud in my soul.
It had nothing to do with nursing school, though, except potential impact to a potential career. I urge you to speak with your primary care provider if you are actually still wanting nursing. If you have grown filled with despair BECAUSE of nursing, rethink your options, learn about specialties, use the break between semesters/quarters to decide if this is the right direction for you, or if maybe a certain specialty feels better to you than what you've experienced in your first year. Hospital nursing can be dreary and you may find happiness in the many, many other places nurses can be found.
Please, though, speak with your provider about this.