I am about to graduate BSN in May. I fell like I really don't know anything. I am afraid I might end up being a "fake nurse".
Everyone tells me that you don't become a nurse until you work as a nurse. However, I fell like I don't remember a thing I have learned in nursing school.
For example, I've only been able to draw blood only once, put a foley catheter once, taken it out a few times, installed an IV about 3 times. That scare me.
My BSN program didn't prepare me to do squat, clinically speaking. I couldn't flush a heparin lock when I graduated. But the truth is those are really only procedures - being a nurse is much more cerebral than that. You learn about how to look at the whole picture of a patient in nursing school, and then you learn the procedural stuff in your first year or two OUT of nursing school, and THEN you figure out how to combine the two areas of expertise. It takes time, but you'll eventually (if you learn from mistakes and ask thousands of questions) become an expert nursing diagnostician, know what to do for a patient's problems, and be competent to do it.
What you learn in school is how to gauge if something's safe and when to ask questions. I knew next to nothing when I graduated (BSN) in '02. I had never done venipuncture of any kind. I had never seen an NG or an ostomy. I don't remember that I knew anything about JPs or other types of drains. I'd never done a dressing change except on mannequins. I was taught to be very, very careful with narcotics.
Then I started work on a general surgical floor and boy, did I learn! I couldn't believe that in a single evening I would empty the Pyxis of morphine, sometimes for a single patient. I had ostomy bags that exploded poop everywhere. I'd forget to unclamp IV lines and couldn't figure out why the pump kept beeping. I called a doctor because a patient's stool was orange (she'd had oral contrast!). This was not even three years ago and I cringe at the memory. You learn so much, so fast, and you won't even realize it until you meet a new grad who asks a ridiculous question and you realize you used to be that nurse.
Mommy2Katiebaby
79 Posts
My BSN program didn't prepare me to do squat, clinically speaking. I couldn't flush a heparin lock when I graduated. But the truth is those are really only procedures - being a nurse is much more cerebral than that. You learn about how to look at the whole picture of a patient in nursing school, and then you learn the procedural stuff in your first year or two OUT of nursing school, and THEN you figure out how to combine the two areas of expertise. It takes time, but you'll eventually (if you learn from mistakes and ask thousands of questions) become an expert nursing diagnostician, know what to do for a patient's problems, and be competent to do it.