I am nervous to be a new grad amidst the pandemic

love2banurse89, BSN, RN · Mar 29, 2021

Congratulations on your upcoming graduation!

I understand your anxiety; know you’re not the only one experiencing it as many students have been very limited on clinicals due to COVID. I have a couple of suggestions.

thru the rest of school, actively seek out observing and/or doing any possible procedure you can. Let your instructors and the nurses at clinical locations know you want to watch &/or do anything! Then thank them for the opportunity. Many nurses love to teach students & I hope you will come in contact w/some
.if you are working as a CNA or Med Aide, do the same—explain your situation to the nurses and actively seek out experiences.
read up on basic procedures—injections, checking blood sugars, starting IVs, inserting catheters, etc. watch the procedures on Youtube but watch w/discernment—many times they’re done wrong. Also know that every facility will have its own step by step procedure, which may vary somewhat from what you read or see.
when you interview for jobs, ask about orientation. Be confident but honest in what experiences you have & have not had. Be confident—no nurse has done all the procedures when they graduate!
when you start your new job, make it known that you want to help with or do any procedures you can. Be friendly & outgoing & willing to help other nurses when they need it. Go the extra step when you can in answering a call light, etc. Training someone takes time & effort and if you are willing to “give” a little extra, most of those you work with will be willing to help.
Have confidence! You have made it they nursing school during this difficult time! Even seasoned nurses review procedures they haven’t done for a long time. Before giving COVID vaccinations I quickly looked up how to find landmarks for an IM injection—I “knew” how to find the landmarks, for for my own piece of mind I wanted to double check.

You can do it! You are about to embark on an amazing career!

Orca, ADN, ASN, RN · Apr 1, 2021

Everybody is unprepared to perform a lot of the skills required in nursing when they first graduate. Nursing school makes us minimally qualified to practice. The real learning happens when we start each new assignment. You were smart enough to make it through nursing school - not an easy course of study. The skills will come with experience. Nursing school exposes us to a variety of them, but we seldom do enough of any one thing to become truly proficient at it.

When I graduated, HIV was the big concern. There were no drugs to combat it, and getting it was essentially a death sentence. Although we were taught to treat everyone as if they were infected, it got into my head the first time that I gave an injection to a patient who I knew was HIV positive. I was thinking all the way to the sharps container, this is the hottest needle that I have ever carried. Don't stick yourself. There were also no drugs to combat MRSA. When a group of us went to a floor to assist in the bed-to-chair transfer of a 400-pound patient with respiratory MRSA, we dressed like we were going to the moon, and we were terrified of the possibility of infection. It took longer to get in and out of the gear than it did to perform the transfer.

I practiced nursing for about a year before I felt like I really knew what I was doing and I had full confidence in my skills and my decisions. Until then, I consulted with more experienced colleagues frequently, and I used their experience to add to my own. I hope that you have good mentors like I did. It makes a big difference.

emma8989 · Apr 20, 2021

Thank you everyone for your kind words and advice! Very much appreciate it and I hope to work with nurses like you in the future!

Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN · Apr 26, 2021

You will. And in fifty years you will be the one quoted in the AJN about what it was like now.
Good luck!