I just want to cry!!! I'm VERY overwhelmed!!

[2bTraumaRN2008]

Hi All-

I am a "brand" new nurse of about 7weeks. I am orienting in the ED, my "dream" unit, and I am feeling like this was a huge mistake.

Nursing is a career change for me, so I have had NO previous medical/health related experience and I think it's really hurting me, so I've been told and I'm also thinking it myself. I was pulled into the educators office on Tuesday and told they were giving me two more weeks on the unit with another preceptor, to see what their opinion was, to see if I was going to make it in the ED. Apparently, I am lacking in skills and some educational areas for the ED. Well, needless to say, I was totally thrown for a loop when I was told this. I felt as though I was coming along pretty well. Also, prior to being hired, by the way they knew I had NO previous health related experience, I would have up to 6 months of precepting if need be, and I was now told it is 8 weeks, but they will allow longer if needed. I thought I was just going to LOSE it when they told me this.

They told me I may be better off working on med/surg for a year to get experience and I could come back to the ED at a later point if I wanted to. Do I look for a positon in this hospital or look elsewhere if I take this route or I am forced to take this route???

I need some advice/suggestions please, on what you all think I should do. I'm feeling like the med/surg might not be a bad idea after all, especially since I have NO previous experience. Most of their "new" nurses have been techs in the department for 5+ years, so they are very comfortable when they transition to their RN positions.

Overwhelmed here, please share your thoughts!!

[SoundofMusic]

These posts are just heartbreaking and never ending. I wish the powers that be that enable this situation to keep perpetuating itself were listening.

We as new graduates nowadays are NOT being prepared adequately for our jobs. Read the thread on Hospitals suck at orientation thread.

The general consensus there is that schools just won't or can't prepare a new nurse to hit the ground running, especially those of us from former professions with no prior experience.

So, with things as they are, many of us will be thrown out on ICU's, or the ED and we will feel like utter failures and be nitpicked, shamed, harrassed, overcorrected incessantly. We will be gnawed on, or completely EATEN by these veteran nurses who must have had lobotomies in the part of their brains that store memories of their own experiences as new grads -- OR, they themselves most likely started as techs and worked their way up through floors to ICUs or whatever and just never had the same experiences. My own boss in the ICU and my current boss who is a FNP say they would have NEVER gone to the ICU first -- both started as techs and worked their way up.

So, PLEASE don't get down on yourself. It's not your fault. I myself left an ICU after 3 months. as a new grad and went PROUDLY back to the floor to get my nursing thing down. I have enough sense and respect for myself and for this profession to know that I need TIME to gain experience and get my "sea legs" so to speak. It's not being a failure -- it's being SMART to start from the ground up. It will give you advantage over any new grad you may encounter someday as you then move to a more critical area. You need to build a foundation first before you build a house.

Plus, our hospital seems to run critical care fellowships year round and there are many veteran nurses there from all backgrounds making the change after several years of floor nursing -- they are entirely welcomed into these fellowships from what I've seen!

I have found myself that floor nursing isn't any less demanding than an ICU. Sure, we don't perform the technical procedures, but handling 4-6pts. requires incredible organization and people skills. You have to be up on 4-6 backgrounds and develop relationships with those patients. I feel it's where the "real" nursing gets done, the education, the advocacy, etc. It's where the patients also remember YOU as the nurse who took care of them and helped them to get home (as they are less likely to be sedated, intubated, out of it, etc.) -- I have found it to be very rewarding. I laugh, joke, pray with, cry with the patients here -- much more heartwarming, IMO.

I've also loved that I can dicker around alone in a room and really figure things out. I've mastered the Ominous IV PUMP that way -- just by being alone for a while and figuring things out myself -- because there was time .... there is time to think there, pts are less critical, and you can let things sink into your brain a lot better.

I'm not sure I'll ever get back to the ICU -- may go into OR or something, or try L&D, Telemetry or whatever. I want to get to a lot of areas first before I get back to that environment, if ever. I like the camraderie of a floor as well -- I actually have time once in a while to just shoot the breeze with some of my co-workers -- in the ICU, I wasn't permitted to take my eyes off the pt or the charts -- it just felt inhumane.

[blueheaven]

We as new graduates nowadays are NOT being prepared adequately for our jobs. Read the thread on Hospitals suck at orientation thread.

When I was in nursing school we WERE adequately prepared to come out of school and "hit the ground running" if you will and while in school we got to see what it was like "in the real world" of nursing. Can't place all the blame on the hospitals...some of it needs to go back to those nursing programs both AD and BSN that think for some reason think that clinical skills are just not as important as the "book learnin'"

[SoundofMusic]

Right, BlueHeaven -- that was the consensus on our thread, that it's not the hospital's fault -- in fact, they are forced into providing us our additional "year" of education that the current BSN and especially the accelerated programs dont' always provide.

So,new grads get out, thinking they're ready, when all they're really ready for is to pass the NCLEX exam, not necessarily to be a functioning nurse. I know I sure wasn't. Just hadn't had anywhere near enough clinical time in school.

I will harp on this forever, as long as we see these "I'm so overwhelmed I want to quit" threads -- because it just keeps going on.

[buffscotty]

Hmm..this seems odd to me to see this post. Here I am willing to give my right arm to be a GN at a Level 1 ED, and there are people who have it that don't enjoy it. Makes you really see how different we all are when it comes to what we enjoy.

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

Hmm..this seems odd to me to see this post. Here I am willing to give my right arm to be a GN at a Level 1 ED, and there are people who have it that don't enjoy it. Makes you really see how different we all are when it comes to what we enjoy.

My impression is that the OP felt much the same way you did ("dream job") starting out, so I'd advise you to strongly consider the possibility that you might feel similarly disillusioned, down the road. I'm not saying you definitely shouldn't go straight into a critical care position (ICU or ED), because there are clearly those for whom it works out just fine, and I'm delighted to see that things are looking up for the OP. What I am saying is keep your eyes open and your mind open. Even in the best of circumstances, the transition from nursing school to nursing practice is a very big challenge. At least part of the time, and I really think a lot of the time, the reason we see posts from new nurses feeling overwhelmed is not because their schools or their employers have failed them--it's just really hard! Many--hopefully most--of these overwhelmed nurses will be a lot more confident and competent in a few months, and it seems pretty typical that the second year is a lot closer to being comfortable, but a lot of pretty strong nurses have told me they didn't feel truly comfortable for the first five years, and I'm starting to see their point.

[buffscotty]

No, I do think I would enjoy it. I worked ED last summer at the same hospital and love it. So hopefully I would feel the same.