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.
I just started at a place where I feel like I've been thrown to the wolves. Started off with a HUGE misunderstanding-- was told I'd get to cross-train to ICU and ER by the nurse manager... turns out that no new orientee has floated to either in at least 2 years, so imagine my surprise when I was called into the office and berated for going down to ER an introducing myself to the manager there and touching base with her... you know, in keeping with the advice I got when I graduated that you ought to go and introduce yourself to the nurse manager on the floor you applied to, to help you get a job. I just figured hey, I have time why not go pop in and say hi and touch base. Well, boy was I ever embarassed. So now I'm "that girl" who's "too aggressive"... yay.
So fast forward to Wednesday night, my first night shift. I'd had about 6 days on days where they just gave me 4 patients and said "go." Wait, what? I am caring for all 4 patients by myself on my first day? My first preceptor (I've had 4 so far and only 8 shifts) thought total immersion was the way to go, and that's about the summation of any formal orientation I got. Needless to say I didn't learn anything, got way behind, cried a lot, forgot a bunch of things... you know, the usual. I had HOPED that nights were going to be easier, but no that was wrong too. No aides, no help, tons of admits... my preceptor started off the night with horrible attitude and obvious annoyance at my questions and this kept on until about the middle of Thursday's shift where I finally had enough of her snapping, her rolling her eyes when I had a question, etc. I was frustrated, tired, overwhelmed, angry. She would snap at me when I asked questions, and start answering them halfway through, before I had even finished talking. Coupled with heavy sighs and shaking her head, finally I said "You know? Nobody comes out of nursing school perfect. Give me a break." I was way behind then too because of the admission that I was late with meds, I forgot information that I looked up about Midorine, ... the whole 9 yards of fail. That was me that night.
Well, at the end of Thursday's shift she had a talk with me. She told me that my attitude was poor, that she expected me to be able to handle the "easy" assignment I had (yeah, a trach patient on Jevity feeds in a new peg tube, a dialysis patient with fluid overload and SOB, a drug seeker who wanted RTC morphine and an admission) and that she had serious doubts about my ability. She said "I'm an adult, you need to start acting like one." Excuse me?? She then said that all of this was going to be written up in a report what was going to be given to the unit supervisor, the floor supervisor, and nursing education. I asked if I would have an opportunity to evaluate her, because I felt that all the help I asked for was begrudgingly given and I also felt her attitude was unwarranted. She got VERY defensive and said "You can tell them whatever you want about me, I don't care." She then said "Nobody on the floor is going to want to help you with your attitude. I guarantee you, nobody on nights is going to do anything for you." And then the kicker: "If you want to walk away nobody is going to say anything." Was she just trying to encourage me to quit??? Then she gave me a terse "good luck" and walked out. I cried the whole way home in the car, she made me question my ability, my intelligence, she made me wonder why I had gotten into this field at all, she made me feel stupid and unwelcome.
I found out that she had just been doing things for me, most aggravatingly answering phone calls from the MDs about patients and not telling me. She set up the room for my vent patient and pointed at it and said "That's how the room's supposed to look for a a patient on a vent with jevity feeds." and then walked off! Then at report in the morning she's telling the nurse coming on about the patient getting a Swan for CVP monitoring (which I thought needed to be an ICU patient... right?) and I never heard about that at all, but apparently an MD had told her during a phone call, that she never communicated with me.
The worst part about it is that she sat all night and talked with the charge nurse about me and the charge nurse who had once been friendly and genial is now cold and silent and terse.
This hospital hasn't given me a formal orientation yet, I'm lucky I'm familiar with some of the stuff that goes on because I did Nursing 4, 7, and 9 there, but I'm nowhere near proficient!! This is SO unfair that I really considered leaving nursing altogether, but coming on here reading what you all had to say has made me feel so much better. I don't feel so bad now about needing extra help. But still when I think about Wednesday and Thursday's shifts I still cry.
Can a bad performance eval and her basically telling me I can walk away and nobody would say anything.. I mean, can they fire me?
Specializes in Hospice, ONC, Tele, Med Surg, Endo/Output.
Poor thing. I hear you. This is the most saddest and frustrating thing about being a new nurse. Now you have learned that nurses really do eat their young. The preceptor you described is bitter, lazy, and entitled to hurt the feelings of others. I was fired from my first nursing job sixteen years ago because i was precepted by nurses who taught me nothing then complained to management that i was slow. The next day i called an outpatient surgery center and was hired on the spot. Do not be surprised if you are fired or are asked to leave. Unfortunately, the type of treatment you received is very common in nursing, which is why i've dreaded being a nurse from the first day. People just don't treat one another right. Don't forget to apply for unemployment if it doesn't work out. Nursing is a bafflingly thankless profession, but once you are a nurse it is hard to get out of it because it took many years and much money to become one and in order to get the kind of pay we make it's back to school all over again for another profession.
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. 
MOJO_RN
11 Posts
Oh man am I right there with you.
I just started at a place where I feel like I've been thrown to the wolves. Started off with a HUGE misunderstanding-- was told I'd get to cross-train to ICU and ER by the nurse manager... turns out that no new orientee has floated to either in at least 2 years, so imagine my surprise when I was called into the office and berated for going down to ER an introducing myself to the manager there and touching base with her... you know, in keeping with the advice I got when I graduated that you ought to go and introduce yourself to the nurse manager on the floor you applied to, to help you get a job. I just figured hey, I have time why not go pop in and say hi and touch base. Well, boy was I ever embarassed. So now I'm "that girl" who's "too aggressive"... yay.
So fast forward to Wednesday night, my first night shift. I'd had about 6 days on days where they just gave me 4 patients and said "go." Wait, what? I am caring for all 4 patients by myself on my first day? My first preceptor (I've had 4 so far and only 8 shifts) thought total immersion was the way to go, and that's about the summation of any formal orientation I got. Needless to say I didn't learn anything, got way behind, cried a lot, forgot a bunch of things... you know, the usual. I had HOPED that nights were going to be easier, but no that was wrong too. No aides, no help, tons of admits... my preceptor started off the night with horrible attitude and obvious annoyance at my questions and this kept on until about the middle of Thursday's shift where I finally had enough of her snapping, her rolling her eyes when I had a question, etc. I was frustrated, tired, overwhelmed, angry. She would snap at me when I asked questions, and start answering them halfway through, before I had even finished talking. Coupled with heavy sighs and shaking her head, finally I said "You know? Nobody comes out of nursing school perfect. Give me a break." I was way behind then too because of the admission that I was late with meds, I forgot information that I looked up about Midorine, ... the whole 9 yards of fail. That was me that night.
Well, at the end of Thursday's shift she had a talk with me. She told me that my attitude was poor, that she expected me to be able to handle the "easy" assignment I had (yeah, a trach patient on Jevity feeds in a new peg tube, a dialysis patient with fluid overload and SOB, a drug seeker who wanted RTC morphine and an admission) and that she had serious doubts about my ability. She said "I'm an adult, you need to start acting like one." Excuse me?? She then said that all of this was going to be written up in a report what was going to be given to the unit supervisor, the floor supervisor, and nursing education. I asked if I would have an opportunity to evaluate her, because I felt that all the help I asked for was begrudgingly given and I also felt her attitude was unwarranted. She got VERY defensive and said "You can tell them whatever you want about me, I don't care." She then said "Nobody on the floor is going to want to help you with your attitude. I guarantee you, nobody on nights is going to do anything for you." And then the kicker: "If you want to walk away nobody is going to say anything." Was she just trying to encourage me to quit??? Then she gave me a terse "good luck" and walked out. I cried the whole way home in the car, she made me question my ability, my intelligence, she made me wonder why I had gotten into this field at all, she made me feel stupid and unwelcome.
I found out that she had just been doing things for me, most aggravatingly answering phone calls from the MDs about patients and not telling me. She set up the room for my vent patient and pointed at it and said "That's how the room's supposed to look for a a patient on a vent with jevity feeds." and then walked off! Then at report in the morning she's telling the nurse coming on about the patient getting a Swan for CVP monitoring (which I thought needed to be an ICU patient... right?) and I never heard about that at all, but apparently an MD had told her during a phone call, that she never communicated with me.
The worst part about it is that she sat all night and talked with the charge nurse about me and the charge nurse who had once been friendly and genial is now cold and silent and terse.
This hospital hasn't given me a formal orientation yet, I'm lucky I'm familiar with some of the stuff that goes on because I did Nursing 4, 7, and 9 there, but I'm nowhere near proficient!! This is SO unfair that I really considered leaving nursing altogether, but coming on here reading what you all had to say has made me feel so much better. I don't feel so bad now about needing extra help. But still when I think about Wednesday and Thursday's shifts I still cry.
Can a bad performance eval and her basically telling me I can walk away and nobody would say anything.. I mean, can they fire me?