New Grad in NICU - Advice?

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Hi everyone :) I got my BSN in December and was hired for a large hospitals NICU floor around April. Orientation began in June and I've been there almost a month now. I am doing rotations with another orientee in the Postpartum floor, then will rotate to peds, then PICU and back to NICU (don't ask why they are doing it this way as I have no idea myself). This is my first nursing job and I'm pretty scared/nervous. Any advice for a new Grad going into this speciality? Part of the deal is that I will sometimes be floated to picu although this will not happen until after orientation

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Specializes in NICU.

Are you trolling us? There are no less than 9 threads asking the same question on the first page asking this very same question. You have 46 posts, so you're not new to AN...

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Specializes in Neonatal Nursing.

Hi katie6126,

I was hired in June and I will start this month. Although I do not have any experience to tell you myself, I asked a person that works in the NICU, and she told me to remain flexible. She says be willing to learn because it is a lot and to try not to stress. It really is not hard for someone to just give you advice instead of calling someone a troll. I thought this site was to help fellow nurses in need and not to be condescending and snarky. I hope the best for you and all of the new grads entering a wonderful specialty!

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Specializes in NICU.

RescueNinja, perhaps I was a bit snarky, but it sounds like you're very new to AN considering that you've only posted 8 times (although you may have lurked for years, to be fair). I've been on this forum back when I was a nursing student and have contributed to this forum many times here and throughout AN.

The OP has multiple posts going back as far as 2 years ago, so she is clearly not new to the AN community. I appreciate that sometimes folks don't know how internet forums work and are panicked/excited/anxious and need to ask their questions or let it all out. I usually post something like "congratulations on the job, do a search please." And yeah, I wasn't being my most friendly self when I posted that. But it's quite frustrating to see a thread like this pop up on someone who should know better. I realize she was probably not actually trolling this forum. But I also feel that posters should take some responsibility for what they post (as I mentioned, there are literally 9 threads on the front page asking the exact same question).

What we should really do is have pinned threads addressing these often asked topics and have a moderator that will close all threads asking the same questions over and over again so that people don't have to look through multiple threads trying to get their question answered.

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Specializes in Neonatal Nursing.

BabyNP, I do not understand how being new or old to this site would cause you to comment in such a way that would come off as kind of snarky. Replying with a simple but meaningful "congratulations" would have sufficed. I thought this community was here to help new and old nurses. If you are so tired of this discussion, and you have seen it multiple times, why comment? You can just scroll down and continue with life.

I understand that there are multiple posts on this subject, but you do not have to call a person a troll because they wanted their own answers. I also wrote a post on advice as a new grad in the NICU. You replied to my post with information that was not useful to me, but I thanked you anyway. I would just like to see more supporting than bashing.

Katie6126, I want to apologize for not saying this sooner, but congratulations on the job!!!! I would like to know how you are liking the NICU if you do not mind me asking? I would love to hear from a new nurse about their experience. I cannot wait until I start working in 14 days!

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Specializes in NICU.

To answer your questions/comments:

1. When you've been on this site for a long time, seeing people make the same request despite knowing how to use the search key (again, she has been on AN for 2 years) becomes frustrating. I explained this in my earlier post. You are new to AN (presumably) and as a newer poster, generally get more patience from AN posters since you don't know the culture as well.

2. This community is designed to support nurses, you are correct. But it is not designed to enable people. You can see many threads for people are asking a question that is clearly their homework for school and get called out on it. The enabling on this case is for someone who has been on this site for 2 years is asking someone to do all the work for her rather than read the 9 threads that are on the front page, not to mention what I imagine are dozens of archives. When I was brand new I did a ton of reading of the archives.

3. I am commenting in the hopes that the OP will not repeat this mistake in the future and to serve as a reminder to anyone who is reading this thread that there are multiple resources available and they should utilize them. Not doing so wastes all of our time and creates unnecessary clutter in this forum.

4. I did not call the OP a troll. I asked if she was trolling. Big difference. I also recognized that it was a tad snarky and said as much in my next post because no, I don't truly believe she was trolling.

5. I'm sorry that my congratulations to you was not helpful. But notice that you only received 1 reply from someone who didn't actually provide much information but rather directed you to other useful links. Links that this OP could have also used, had she taken the time to look at the existing current threads. Bottom line is that people grow weary of answering the same questions over and over again and cluttering the forum unnecessarily decreases traffic to this forum.

Lastly I would like to emphasize again that this is a problem in this forum and we should be working together to fix it, not arguing over the appropriateness of hand-holding in this forum.

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Specializes in Neonatal Nursing.

Okay babyNP, I get your point. An "Internet troll" and "trolling" are the same so do not try to justify it being different because it is not. The person that replied to my post gave me links but also gave me advice on textbooks that I could buy. Let's agree to disagree and you have an awesome night!!

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Specializes in NICU.
Okay babyNP, I get your point. An "Internet troll" and "trolling" are the same so do not try to justify it being different because it is not.

An internet troll is someone who intentionally is trying to get people pissed off at them on the internet.

Trolling is a fishing term in which you put a fishing line in the water from a moving boat while moving quite slowly through the water. Thus putting little effort into fishing. In a message board, "trolling for answers" is asking a question without putting much effort to research the question to see if it has already been answered. In this case, the question was asked NINE times on the first page. She didn't even need to use the "search" bar. They were there on the first page. All she had to do was scroll down.

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Specializes in Neonatal Nursing.

Okay, thanks for your clarification. That goes for anyone who does not have any useful information. Scroll down and move on :). You have a great day!

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