New Grad: Unhappy with my job on Med-Tele

[mjlover]

Hi everyone!

I'm a new grad (well as of December 2016). I've been on a Med-Tele unit for about 9 months working the night shift. Those months have been filled with a LOT of anxiety, tears, and I guess fear/depression. I love my patients, but boy do I hate my job.

Here's what I've been personally dealing with. When I start my run of shifts, I legit cannot sleep the first day because of all the anxiety. I pray a lot for strength to make it through my shifts. I'm so afraid of hurting my patients, making a med error, or missing something pertinent from my assessment that leads them to code on me. I just don't want to hurt anyone, and I REALLY don't want anyone to code on me. I know we're in this field where anything can happen, but I pray it doesn't happen. I have had a patient code on me (I was just out of orientation). I have had to call an RRT on a patient. Thank goodness my team was there with me to guide me through it. The anxiety is too much sometimes. I don't show it at work, but before work, I'm usually crying with family about how I hate the job, and if no one is near, I'm praying non-stop for strength to pull through. I don't get much sleep. At the beginning, I used to call-in, because I was so afraid. Totally dumb, I know. I get to work at 5:30p.m. so I can dig through everything in my patients' charts. It helps me not feel as anxious. So I'm basically at the hospital for 14 hours. It also helps me feel tired enough to get 3 hours of sleep for my next shift. My anxiety doesn't allow me more than that. I thought I would have less fear with time, but it's not going away it seems.

Our unit's ratio is most of the time 6:1. It's tough, especially with only 4 nurses on the 24-bed unit who are all running around. The hospital I work at is closing our unit (which has led to a lot of EXPERIENCED night nurses quitting). So we're going to run with 4 nurses up until the unit closes. All the nurses have to find a new home. A lot of nurses on our team are heading to another floor that is true cardiac AKA CABGs and sheaths. I have always said that I want to someday be an L&D nurse, but I was going to start in Mother/Baby first. I just don't think Med-Surg/Tele is the place for me. I'm miserable.

Everyone says get your year of Med-Surg. Do you guys think it's okay for me to move on to Mother-Baby with 9 months of Med/Tele under me? I truly don't think I can last there any longer.

[jennylee321]

Well you can't stay on your current floor for much longer since its closing so people will understand that as the reason you are moving on. My worry for you would be that your anxiety might get worse in L&D, if your worried about missing things now and the resulting harm this may cause to patients, could dealing with mums and babies in a new specialty increase these worries. I'd suggest seeking some counselling for your anxiety before you try to get into a new specialty. Might help you developing so new doping skills to help with these worries in your next job.

[guest52816]

I agree with the above poster who suggested you try counseling for your anxiety. As a fairly new graduate, I spent seven months working on a busy med-surge unit, and HATED every minute of every shift.

I completely understand your anxiety, but arriving at work, an hour and half prior to the actual start of your shift, is not normal. You are definitely anxious!

Personally, I think you would do fine in Mother/Baby. If your med-surge unit is anything like mine was, the patients are elderly, sick and sometimes unstable. Mother/Baby will bring a new set of stressors, but the patients will be young and with fewer co-morbidities.

And who knows, you could LOVE Mother/Baby.

Good luck!