I am a new RN, graduated in dec 2018. I am starting my first RN job this month as a surgery float. Im from Canada so I did a 10 week preceptorship at the end of my degree.
I really really dislike nursing. To be clear, i enjoyed the academic part - i like science and learning and i did well in the academic part. It was clinicals i hated. I realized this more than halfway through my degree but I didnt want to quit and i naively thought id somehow like it by the end. In 2nd year i made a med error in clinical with no harm to ththe patient but i was seriously traumatized and didnt deal with it until after i graduated when I decided i needed to start going to therapy. This event in 2nd year severely intensified the anxiety i was already experiencing. Honestly i had never before experienced in my life what i would call anxiety until nursing school - and I already had a unrelated diploma and had worked since i was 15, but never experienxed anything near the continually worsening anxiety in nursing. In the first week of my 4th year preceptorship, I had a "near miss" were i hung a med and realized at the last second that it was too early. I was completely devestated, went home and told my parents i was quitting and not going back the next day. Long story short i did go back and finish, but it was rough
I didnt realize fully how much nursing had affected me until i finished school. All of the sudden i started to be happy again. Like, actually happy. I hadnt realized how much i hated my life and myself up to that point. My therapist diagnosed me with situational depression.
So now, i dont know what to do. I have this job starting in a week and i am getting very anxious again. I really really dont want to do it. But i feel like i need to? I dont know what else to do and it seems pretty difficult to get a nonhospital job without hospital experience but there in absolutely no way i can go back to how things were before, even if "just" for 6 months or a year. Any insight? Tips?
