Sorry for the long post, but I really need some advice on my situation here..
I'm a new graduate and I've been on orientation on a surgical floor since for 5 weeks. I was hired for the night shift but they decided to have me on orientation on the day shift for the first 5 weeks because that's where I'd get lots of practice. I was a little worried from the get go when I first met my preceptor. I could tell from my first day that she is a moody type of person. She also would rarely even talk to me, so I would always have to initiate any type of discussion. She would just do her charting and go about her day without even talking to me, so I had to ask questions constantly. It was bad enough that CNAs sitting next to us ended up showing me how to do charting. She didn't introduce me to any of the other nurses, and when she talked to them acted as if I wasn't even there. Not the best way to make a new employee feel welcome who doesn't know anyone on the floor.
Things got a little better after the first day once I was given the responsibility of doing meds, assessments, and charting. The only reason it got better was because I had less time around her and more time with patients. Around 2-3 weeks into my orientation I noticed she started to get more annoyed with my many questions, however keep in mind this is my first job since graduating nursing school so obviously I have lots of questions. By week 4 she was having me do all the meds, assessments, and charting, and she wouldn't help me with any of it even if I got behind. For example, one day I had to get fitted for an N95 mask and I was gone for around an hour being fitted. I was assuming she would help me out while I was gone and do some charting so we could stay on track. Come to find out she hadn't done anything, and was surprised and not happy when I told her I thought she would help since I was off the floor for an hour. Right after I told her this, she got on my case and she asked why I hadn't done the vaccination protocol that we do for new admits. I told her she had never shown me how to do that, and she said in an annoyed voice, "Fine, I'll just do it myself." She then got upset at me for being behind on giving a pt his coumadin. Obviously at this point I'm behind, after having to do 2 sets of charting on 5 patients! This was about the time that she started acting really weird when I ask her questions. She would just stand there for a while and look at me funny while I ask questions. This led me to feel nervous everytime I ask her a question as it seemed she would scrutinize my every thought. I started simply asking other nurses questions I wasn't sure about, as they would just answer the question kindly and not make me feel stupid like my preceptor.
Yesterday was the last day with my preceptor and the end of the 5th week of orientation, and it was my worst day of all. I had a bunch of patients with total knee surgeries which required dressing changes, and they needed to be put in CPM machines. And of course I had that one patient who had tons of IV antibiotics, morphine pushes, and phenergan that required me to be in her room constantly. I had everything done, except for 3 dressing changes and the patients hadn't been put in CPM machines. I was told the CNAs always put the patients in their CPMs so I didn't worry about that. Around 2 PM my preceptor comes to find me in one of my pt's rooms and says that the Dr. is ****** at us, and has asked her around 3 times why the dressing changes haven't been done yet and why they aren't in their CPMs. She asks me what has been taking me so long to get everything done and when I tell her about the demanding patient, she just says, "You need to get a routine down so you can get stuff done." So I say alright, get my dressing supplies and get to the first dressing change as fast as I can. I then had to go out to the nursing station to ask her whether or not I should take out his hemovac and I see her complaining to the charge nurse (I'm sure about me).
Eventually I get them all done and the day is over. My preceptor finally comes and sees if my charting is all in and says she is heading out. Apparently she didn't want to give me any feedback even though this was our last day together! I am so tired, upset, and confused at this point but I still asked her to give me feedback on how I'm doing. She proceeds to tell me that I'm not getting stuff done quick enough, and at this point i should be progressing ahead of where I'm at currently. My heart sinks.. Keep in mind she's telling me this near another nurse so I ask if we can go into a private room! We get into the room and she says, "How do I say this without hurting your feelings? It seems like things just aren't clicking with you, I don't understand your thinking process. You don't understand lots of things that should be common sense to a new nurse. I can tell you didn't get much practice with nursing skills during your clinicals, how many days were you in the hospital before now?" She then goes onto say that I need to learn how to prioritize things, and she says that I am too slow and methodical about how I do things and I need to get a better routine down. At this point I don't even know what to say, and I tell her, "You know, to be honest with you, for the last 2 weeks it seems like you don't like me at all. Whenever I ask a question you just stand there and look at me funny. I'm not exactly sure what happened but it's pretty obvious. It has caused me to not even want to ask you any questions at all." She seemed really surprised that I called her out on this and she apologized. She then went on to say that the night nurse I'll be orienting with is very anal about how she does things so specifically and she doesn't think our personalities will mesh. I am 90% positive she has told the rest of the nurses and CNAs that I'm a complete idiot who doesn't know what the hell I'm doing. They were very nice to me, but the last couple weeks none of them will really talk to me anymore. My preceptor is very catty and I've heard her calling other night nurses stupid around me. She speaks her mind and if she doesn't like someone she makes it known to everyone. She has also worked this unit over 5 years and is respected and buddy/buddy with most other nurses. She treats everyone great minus the one person she is working with 12 hours per day, me. She even told me that the clinical nurse educator asked how my orienting was going, and she told her that it's not going so great because I'm slow at picking things up. My educator is best friends with the nurse manager on my unit, so no doubt she also thinks I'm an idiot.
This was one of the things she said was common sense and I shouldn't have been confused about. One of my patients at the start of my shift was getting a bag of D5 1/2 w/ 20meq K and to be honest I'd never had a patient get that before so I assumed that the K bag was a one time dose and when her IV antibiotics were due, I was supposed to give them with a NS bag, and not just spike a new D5 1/2 K bag. I didn't think you could give K with antibiotics. So I went and asked my preceptor, she misunderstood my question and said to just keep giving it with D5 1/2 but she didn't say anything about the potassium, so I went ahead and gave the antibiotics with regular D5 1/2 without potassium. She was not happy about this mistake and told me it was common sense and I should have already known what to do.
I left work not knowing what the hell I should do. I want so much to quit this job because I know she has spread it around that i'm slow and suck at this job. I've seen her talking to other nurses in corners after I ask her a question and she just looks at me funny. My reputation is tarnished on this unit and I've only been here 5 weeks. I drove home humiliated, ashamed, angry, sad, and confused. I can honestly say that when my wife asked how my day was, I started to cry. I have never cried in front of her before but I'm just so torn up about this. I feel like I went into the wrong field. I should have known as I disliked most of my clinical rotations during school. When I think about quitting and doing something else, I feel a sense of freedom. However, getting my BSN was such a chore that I don't want this one person to ruin this for me. If you're still reading, please, offer any support or opinions.
It is so easy for nurses to forget that they were once new grads too. I attempt to keep this in mind anytime we may have a new grad on the floor. Although I was fortunate to have very nice preceptors when I first finished school I have observed situations where new grads did not feel that their preceptors liked precepting them. This can be very frustrating and I think that when ever you are considered new you may experience some sort of resentment. I do not know why I think that it is a stupid way to act personally, but I guess that is just the way some people are, however things will get better for you just keep pushing forward.
Specializes in Acute Care Cardiac, Education, Prof Practice.
First off :icon_hug:
I am a preceptor, and therefore pretty irritated at this situation so I am going to try and say a few things without judging your preceptor.
1. Never assume relationships: Just because this woman is friends with the manager does not mean she may favor her. You can never really tell the bonds between people until they have been tested. My suggestion is to write down the specific, nursing related issues, i.e. charting, med passes, time management, that you needed help on, and did not recieve. I would then go to my manager.
2. Feedback: Where I precept we recieve a grading/feedback as well as do our preceptees. These go to the education department and are put on file. Keep your assessment professional, to the point and very nursing related. Leave out the "she talked as though I wasn't there" etc, and go more with "my preceptor was often unapproachable" or something to that effect.
3. Move on: The feedback she gave you was a product of her own lack of attention to you. EVERYONE has time management issues in the beginning. It is exactly why we run with preceptors for so long. To watch thier process and have them help tweak ours. Alert your night time preceptor (as I am assuming you will have one for a little bit) to some of the issues you were having on days. Once again, keep it professional. Don't complain about her, don't gossip. Just state the thins you need to work on. If you have a half way decent preceptor she should be able to get you back on track pretty quickly.
4. Do not internalize: Her comments were an unfair assumption of your abilities. She belittled you and it was uncessary. If you find, after having a more helpful preceptor, that the issues are still arising, I would then turn inward and begin to look at them more closely.
Hey Man! While reading your post I was reminded of my preceptorship that just ended not too long ago. This was my final quarter and I worked at a pediatric ICU with a nurse who graduated school herself a couple years ago. I swear we have a lot of things in common as far as our preceptors go!!! During my shifts, there were plenty of times where I would be waiting for the outgoing PM nurse to meet me and my nurse to give report. However, my nurse would simply leave and as soon as I find her..............she is getting report from the outgoing nurse!! I always felt that it is bad enough for me to be working for free essentially for my last clinical hours of nursing school, but to be ignored by my own preceptor sucks even more. Also, I had a hard time with communicating with her because I often had to initiate conversation or asked questions just to talk. I truly believe that if I didn't initiate anything then I would be working with this lady for 12 hours and barely saying anything unless it was absolutely patient-related. I was also a little nervous since my preceptor was just a couple years older than me, but I figured she would be more relatable ........NOT!!! I really am not sure if she didn't like precepting (this was her first time) or me, but we did not mesh well in my opinion.
I tried plenty of times to connect with her by asking her for advice on jobs, school experiences, ect. but that didn't help much. Like I said, she barely even talked to me. Despite all this I kept on and got finished with all my hours. Even though I was horribly broke, I still scraped up some money to give her a gift card and a thank you card to show my appreciation. Even when it was time for her to give me my final eval and me to give her the card...she just acted kinda "funny". She seemed like she didn't care about my stupid card or that I was obligated to give her something. When I had my evaluation with my instructor I was told about what my RN said ( I didn't read it even though I could have easily done so). Apparently my nurse didn't have many nice things to say. She said that she didn't feel like the ICU was "right for me" and that I lacked critical thinking skills!!!!! In my mind I'm like "what the freak?!!!!!". She obviously thought that me asking questions translated into me not having any freaking idea of what I'm doing. As I told my teacher, I ask questions so I learn/clarify and also to maintain safety for the patient. I was a practicum student but guess what.....I'm still just that ........a STUDENT! Honestly, I think that mentoring a student was not right for her. My dream is to work in pediatrics but obviously the way things are right now I'm going to take anything after I graduate (this upcoming Saturday!!!!!!). But one thing I would love to do is to call her whenever I land an ICU job and tell her that despite her opinion of the ICU not being right for me I followed through with my dream. I guess at times we get so caught up in having our self esteem be so dependent on what others think about us, especially people like preceptors, nurses on the unit, ect. However, at the end of the day it is all about you and what you believe. You are obviously smart and are the way to a bright future. Don't let that sorry excuse of a preceptor or anybody else stop what you have worked sooooo hard for! Remember, as long as you are taking care of your patients that is all that matters. I wish you all the best and will be praying for you. Hang in there!!!!!!!
I know how you feel. The samething happened to me but with my nurse educator. She hates me! She made my life so miserable that i quit after 2 months. I graduated in May 2009 and it was my first job. Now i am unemployed because of her. But don't get discouraged like me, you'll survive.
Stop expecting everyone to like you and want to be your friend. Don't worry about them, worry about yourself. .
I have to take exception to this. I used to believe it was what you know and not who you know, but I became a victim of the same kind of thinking and ended up canned. I wish I would have sucked up when the new DON came on board, but she had too many red flags for me to feel comfortable. She told me twice that she thought I was in a fog when she spoke to me. I have never heard anybody ever say that to me in my life. I was totally offended.
It's basic sociology, if you are not in the group, you will soon be out of it.
I am sorry you had such a rough experience with this preceptor... I hope it works out better once you switch to nights!
I was lucky and had wonderful preceptors; now I precept a lot and don't feel as competent. Mostly because I'm really quiet and kind of shy, especially when first meeting people, which isn't good for making people feel welcome and probably makes them think I'm pretty stuck-up and don't want them around. And I also hate giving negative feedback to anyone; which doesn't help them grow and learn. Your thread has given me a wake-up call as to how I need to be more outgoing with people I'm precepting, and more sensitive to their needs.
I wish there were more of a way for those who are great at precepting to be the only ones who do it; but until we have more experienced nurses than new grads, pretty much all the experienced nurses end up as preceptors. (It's not that I don't like precepting; it's that I feel bad for the nurses matched with me because I KNOW i'm not as good at it as many of the others... I think I'm one of the ones management feels is a good nurse so automatically thinks I'm a good preceptor when that's NOT necessarily the case... but there isn't any way to say "no".)
Preceptor carry so many things in her world of doing. Have to be more knowledgeable, experienced, know how to teach n couch, be supportive to others, always works with update. Means when one is appointed as preceptor but lacking of those things then she will act out defensively to protect her esteem. When matched with a smart student with curiousity, agresive in learning, eager to ask more and more question (you know, good student always do that), it becomes disaster to them, then when they act defensively, it becomes disaster to the students...
One who get into that is the unlucky one. But, stay strong... you will get over it..
Night shift will probably be a whole different experience. I would never work day shift at my job- too chaotic! You didn't mention whether you worked up to having multiple patients, like taking two, getting comfortable with that, then three, then four. Hopefully they did that for you, and didn't increase too quickly. I also have to agree with others, she wasn't cut out to be a preceptor. But that doesn't mean others won't be. I just don't think experienced nurses remember what it's like to be a new grad!! But hang in there, five weeks is not nearly enough time to even have an idea what it will be like to work there. Truly! And even if a surgical floor doesn't seem to be your niche, stay and get some experience! It's invaluable!! It also made me smile how the other poster said don't give her the satisfaction of seeing you quit- that's kind of my line of thinking too. I would REFUSE to give her that satisfaction!! In fact, it would motivate me to make friends and establish a good rapport with the patients... because ultimately that matters much more. I hope you find the strength to hang in there! Good luck!
Wow. Holy Crap. All the above advice is great. I just wanted to say that, in my mind, you were doing a LOT of good work each day, with a big patient load. You are going to be just fine. I am preceptign right now in my new ICU job, and I couldn't be happier with my wonderful perceptor. I wish you the best in your career.
09newgradI have noticed in many of the replies to your post that most of us have been through something similar to what you went through at one time or another. I am no exception. Someone gave me advice when I had an unpleasant experience similar to yours. She said "You can use this as a stumbling block or stepping stone". LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE AND LET IT MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the nurse you worked with- is the problem, and again why do nurses ,( no matter what degree of experience) have to treat others like crap!!?? I'm so sick of the old story "it is just like that in nursing" I'm sorry you spent so much time and ect.. getting your BSN, I tell anyone to look to another career when considering nursing, sad but true!! I've been a nurse since 1989, I've learned to play the on-going game, I have no answers, and I still have like 10 years till retirement, but I love the people I care for , and that is what gets me there, Its not the money or because its a job,.. but I do dream somedays of selling tickets at a movie theater, how sweet a job..... Good luck!!
Keep in mind she's telling me this near another nurse so I ask if we can go into a private room! We get into the room and she says, "How do I say this without hurting your feelings? It seems like things just aren't clicking with you, I don't understand your thinking process. You don't understand lots of things that should be common sense to a new nurse. I can tell you didn't get much practice with nursing skills during your clinicals, how many days were you in the hospital before now?" She then goes onto say that I need to learn how to prioritize things, and she says that I am too slow and methodical about how I do things and I need to get a better routine down. At this point I don't even know what to say, and I tell her, "You know, to be honest with you, for the last 2 weeks it seems like you don't like me at all. Whenever I ask a question you just stand there and look at me funny. I'm not exactly sure what happened but it's pretty obvious. It has caused me to not even want to ask you any questions at all." She seemed really surprised that I called her out on this and she apologized. She then went on to say that the night nurse I'll be orienting with is very anal about how she does things so specifically and she doesn't think our personalities will mesh. I am 90% positive she has told the rest of the nurses and CNAs that I'm a complete idiot who doesn't know what the hell I'm doing. They were very nice to me, but the last couple weeks none of them will really talk to me anymore. My preceptor is very catty and I've heard her calling other night nurses stupid around me. She speaks her mind and if she doesn't like someone she makes it known to everyone. She has also worked this unit over 5 years and is respected and buddy/buddy with most other nurses. She treats everyone great minus the one person she is working with 12 hours per day, me. She even told me that the clinical nurse educator asked how my orienting was going, and she told her that it's not going so great because I'm slow at picking things up. My educator is best friends with the nurse manager on my unit, so no doubt she also thinks I'm an idiot. 
jbjelus1
70 Posts
It is so easy for nurses to forget that they were once new grads too. I attempt to keep this in mind anytime we may have a new grad on the floor. Although I was fortunate to have very nice preceptors when I first finished school I have observed situations where new grads did not feel that their preceptors liked precepting them. This can be very frustrating and I think that when ever you are considered new you may experience some sort of resentment. I do not know why I think that it is a stupid way to act personally, but I guess that is just the way some people are, however things will get better for you just keep pushing forward.