My shift haunts me

[NewRN089]

So I'm a fairly new grad - 8 months in. I work on a med-surgery unit at a big university hospital. Whenever I miss something or have a rough shift - as we all do when we are learning-- I go home feeling horrible. I can't stop thinking about how I should have done better and end up worrying about my patient until the next time I work.

Of course nothing bad has ever come of my small mistakes and I really try to never make the same mistake again. Still,

I lose sleep and worry that I'm just incompetent.

How do you keep from doing this? It's not an everyday thing, but when it happens I really get stressed about it.

Thanks in advance!

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

As a student, I sometimes do this already -- I dream about clinical and administering meds and whether or not I did something to harm someone. Our instructors always tell us that every good nurse does this (and then they emphasize how important it is to do our reflection journal entries). Though 8 mos in is quite a ways to still be feeling this way, I think often this is the hardest part of nursing. You always want to make sure you did the best you can and then you analyze what you did do and what can be done better. The emotional stress should motivate you to keep growing and striving to do better. I know this doesn't help, but I expect this to hit me for at least a year as a new grad and then for any time in which I start a new job. It takes me a year, at least, to get comfortable. Time heals all and reflection is healthy. If your reflection, however, is impacting your health, then maybe you might want to start seeing a therapist to help you decompress. It really does help a lot and it may help you find some solutions to what you can do constructively about these issues. Good luck!