I am a new nurse, graduated in September, passed board November 30th and started Orienting December 31st. I just finished my 7th week and until now have been very lucky as far as having most of the nurses I work with be very supportive and nice. I work on a very busy 32 bed Med-Surg/Ortho floor and have worked on this same floor for 3 years before becoming a nurse. I should also mention that I am an LVN, not an RN. Anyways, there is a nurse on Night shift, who has been working as a nurse about a year now. She is much younger than I am. I am 40. Friday was my second day with 5 patients on my own, with my preceptor watching over me. I had my hardest/busiest day yet this past Friday. I had 5 patients. One was a partial gastrectomy patient, one was a lap chole, one was a paraplegic with a flap closure for a decubitus, one was a total knee and the other a lumbar lami. So I had a good group. My patient with the gastrectomy was very busy. She was getting meds every few hours, she was on TPN and Lipids. Neither of which I have had to deal with yet. The patient with the knee replacement was going home, so was the Lami patient. I had critical lab values called to me, Another first. This day was FULL of first time things for me. I also received a PACU patient who had a bulging to the right side of his incision which the PACU nurse had said gotten bigger since he was in PACU. The Dr ordered a STAT MRI so I also had to do my first consent for MRI and all the paperwork. Then my gastrectomy patient got orders for remicade because of her crohns. So Even though I can't hang that I had to do all the pre-paperwork. Weigh her, do the questionnaire etc. My preceptor hung and monitored it because the rate needed to be increased every 15 mins. I also had 2 patients who needed accu checks. One patient required coverage twice. This patient also had a foley which was putting out bloody urine and the report I got from the night nurse was that the output wasn't good enough. Well I made him my priority at the beginning of the day and it just lasted till shift change. Long story short with him was that we scanned him because he was complaining and there was 253 mls of urine in his bladder. Got orders to flush, couldn't flush so we got orders to pull the foley out, wait an hour to see if he could void, he did, but it was just barely under 100. Scanned him again, 507. Got a coude catheter and put it in and a clot came through the tube, bloody urine and cloudy urine. BTW, the old cath had a clot in the tip when I removed it.
Well I guess my first mistake was that when I wrote the orders in the chart to flush, I wrote it a page back. My preceptor noticed and started writing it on the right page, but crossed it out when she saw my order. Ok the next morning when I came in, the night nurse YELLED at me that she had to call the Dr for an order to flush the catheter because there wasn't one written. I found my order and she still kept on going. I was apologizing profusely. But she would NOT let up. She just kept going on and on and on, and all the other nurses there said Oh she DID write the order! Then on her way out she says very rudely and loudly in passing by "OH and the Protonix (iv push) wasn't given and neither were the dulcolax suppositories" and she just walked away. My preceptor then jumped in. #1, I KNEW about the protonix and asked my preceptor to give it, and she said we could leave it for nights because she was doing the remicade which would be much more time consuming for this nurse to deal with at shift change since it needed to be increased every 15 mins. The protonix was due at 7PM. she still wouldn't let up and then stormed out and said "I DON'T CARE DON'T MAKE EXCUSES" OMG, I was mortified and humiliated! Yes, I am new, Yes I wrote the order in the wrong spot, but it was an empty spot. I guess I didn't think to move it up. I was having a bad day! As for the dulcolax, it was not in the emar before i left and wasn't put into the emar until 5AM the next morning. I have no clue why, the other meds that were there on the same order were put in and given at 6:30PM by me. So if all I did was write an order in the wrong place, well considering my day I am pretty ok with that.
My whole point of this is WHY do experienced nurses feel it's just ok to be RUDE. I mean, I can accept constructive criticism, but she was being rude, she was walking around just saying it in the middle of the station at shift change with ALL day and night shift nurses present. I can understand if she says to me hey, you wrote an order in the wrong spot, or she could have even called me at home, but she was just flat our RUDE. She is a NEW nurse her self. (1 year old) But I felt she handled it poorly.
Believe me I am humbled, I don't presume to know everything, I know where I came from. I am just really hurt. This nurse and I worked side by side for YEARS as CNA's before she became a nurse and it seems as though it went straight to her head. No one is perfect.
I know I can handle my job. I know I love my job and I know I still have a lot to learn, but I feel there is NO reason for people to be rude to new nurses, to reduce us to tears. Being rude won't help me learn, it has only made me not like this person very much!
Oh and by the way, this day that was very hectic for me, I was assigned a student nurse which only put more pressure on me. I don't feel ready to have a student with me, I am still new myself, but I can't help who the instructor assigns. I am not saying that in a bad way, but I want students to have someone who is REALLY good at what they do.
Oh well, sorry oto whine, but I am very hurt by this incident
