I have been a nurse for almost 4 years. I have 1 year med surg experience, 1 year obs, and the rest in an ER. We have four zones. One is an urgent care type zone, a medium acuity zone, psych zone, and our critical zone. My first couple of months I pretty much had to beg to get into the critical zone. A year later, I am pretty much in the urgent care or psych zone every shift. I feel completely unprepared anytime I am in the medium acuity or critical zone which only happens once every few months. My skills have gotten worse, my time management is worse, and I am scared to work with high acuity patients at this point. I don't know what to do. I don't know if I'm making any sense, sorry If I'm not clear. I am asked to do things that I've never done, give meds I've never heard of, and be a part of codes when I rarely get any experience in them. It's terrifying. I feel as though I need to start all over. I feel like I wasn't properly trained. I am contemplating leaving nursing all together. I feel like I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing with high acuity patients. I feel like I am a danger to these patients. I almost feel as though I need to redo orientation.
