I am new to posting so I’m sorry for the long read!
I just recently landed my dream job in NICU/CCN. Previously I worked on a Medsurg/Renal transplant floor for a little over a year (I only have a little over a year of nursing experience). Working with babies and their families has always been a dream of mine. I have been on the floor for a little over 8 weeks now. I love the patient population but I am having a hard time adjusting to the culture on the floor and I am looking for some advise.
I am currently working in the continuous care unit and will go to NICU In august. Since I’m used to working with adult I don’t mind starting off on the less acute side of the nicu with the growers/feeders to build a stronger foundation for when I do go to NICU.
I was supposed to have two months of orientation but was cut after around 4 weeks due to staffing issues on the unit. During my orientation I never had the same preceptor. Most of the time the person didn’t know that they were assigned to precept me for the day. Almost everyone I worked with complained the whole time about having me with them for the day which didn’t make me feel great. There has been a lot of turn over on the floor the past couple of years because of bullying so I get that people are burnt out from teaching and I always feel bad when I am sprung on someone. I once was sitting right next to the nurse who was precepting me for the day and she was complaining to another nurse about how much she hates orienting new people. It has been hard for me to gain new skills with people who really don’t want to help you. There are still a lot of things I don’t know how to do. I always ask for help or ask questions if I can’t figure it out for myself but it is like pulling teeth to get other people to help me. My biggest problem has been the culture on the unit. All the staff spend most of their time gossiping about each other or complaining. People genuinely don’t want to help each other out and spend most of their time bullying others, especially the newer nurses. I had one nurse tell me not to expect to make any friends on the floor on my second day there. That statement itself doesn’t bother me since I’m there to help my patients and families and not make friends but I just don’t understand why anyone would go out of their way to say something like that.
I come from a very busy medsurg unit where I am used to not having any free time. There is a lot of down time on this unit. I try to stay as busy as I can so I don’t have to listen to the other nurses complain but since cares are clustered it sometimes is hard to find things to do. I have noticed that being in this environment has started to effect my mood. I am usually a very happy/positive/bubbly person and I find myself feeling grumpy and dreading going into work. On my old floor I got along with everyone. There were obviously people on that floor too who weren’t as nice but I’ve learned to keep my head down and stay busy. My main focus has always been on my patients. However I’ve never had such a hard time making friends or connecting with other people at work before. Everyone is so miserable and hostile all the time there. I worry that it is impacting how I look at this job as well. I’ve always wanted to work in an acute care setting. I love being constantly busy and challenged at work. I find myself feeling bored while I’m there which feels horrible to say. I absolutely adore the babies and their families but since I work in CCN all my cares are focused on feedings and diaper changes. Babies there are on their way home so they are generally very stable and have no acute issues or changes in status. I feel terrible feeling this way. At least this is how I feel working in CCN since I haven’t worked over on the NICU side yet so I can’t speech to how busy/acute it is over there. I have heard from other nurses that NICU is relatively the same as CCN just with more lines/vents.
I’m worried I made a mistake in accepting this job but I also can’t tell if my perspective of this job is being skewed because of the negative atmosphere or if it’s because it actually isn’t a good fit for me. Any advice is appreciate it! Thank you so much and sorry again for the long read!
You're basically damned if you do, damned if you don't in this situation. I'm sorry. I've never seen a whole unit be toxic - usually it is only one or two people. I don't have any advice to add but I did want to say that I'm sorry you're in this situation and you don't deserve it.
I'd wait it out until you've tried the NICU as you've already come this far. And yes, no knows everything, so don't apologize for needing to learn. We've all been there and anyone who pretend they haven't is lying. I will also say this....everyone dumps on Med-Surg units & they can be chaotic....but I find that a lot of the times, the nurses are very supportive of each other compared to higher acuity floors. ?♀️
I am sorry you’re dealing with this! I just don’t understand why they are acting like this. You think they’d WANT more help on the floor to ease the burden on themselves some! It’s definitely a management issue. I had the same thing happen to me where a nurse point blank told me she didn’t want to precept me and told the manager than but they were making her anyway. So she basically just wouldn’t let me follow her anywhere. She kept sending me off with little tasks that aides can do. I knew I wasn’t going to learn this way so I went to manager and explained the problem. Thankfully they found someone on a different shift willing to teach me and what a world of difference it made. Then after orientation I went back to my normal shift and that nurse never did apologize and I avoided asking her for help but she did sometimes give me an easier assignment because I was new for the first few days so I suppose that was her way of apologizing. We got along fine after that. That floor had such a large turnover she was burnt out on training people and I understand that but if you’d help your new people feel supported and wanted then maybe there wouldn’t be such a huge turnover!
Thank you for the feed back. I have now been training in the nicu now for a little over two months and it hasn’t gotten any better. I was really hopeful that it was going to be a better environment for me to work in. My preceptor is really nice but she can be very controlling. She never lets me go into rooms by myself and she will critique everything I do. Yesterday I was changing out an infant’s nasal cannula and redressing it and she was criticizing the way I cut my tegaderm because it was 1cm shorter than it needed to be. I always listen to her input and will redo things if she is unhappy with how I am preforming tasks. I am always open to feedback and constructive criticism but it’s gotten to the point where it feels like she critiques everything I do and that everything I’m doing is wrong. A lot of times she will take over things I’m doing or take medication out of my hand to do it. It’s very discouraging and I feel like I’m having a hard time accomplishing anything because she is always upsets about something I am doing. I’m new to the nicu but I was a nurse on a renal transplant floor for 2 years prior so I do have some skills that translate over. Last night we had a kid that was very sick and vented and she told me that she would be doing everything and that I could watch her. I was very discouraged and disappointed because I wanted to be apart of this kids care and it felt like she was indicating that she didn’t think I was competent enough to do so. The kid ended up coding and I tried to get involved in the code as much as I could by getting supplied/suctioning/decompressing the stomach. I was pretty upset after the code because it was my first one and it’s horrible to see your patient that way and she never debriefed with me. We were able to get the kid back and started a blood transfusion. I pointed out to her that it looks like the IV is infiltrated and she told me it looked fine. I was concerned so I was checking the site every 30 minutes. The IV ended up infiltrating pretty badly and when we went in together to asses she asked me if it looked like this 30 minutes ago which I responded no. She then asked me if I was sure which I was very insulted by and told her I would never keep something infusing through an infiltrated IV. My patients are everything to me and I work really hard to learn as much as I can to be the best nurse I can be for my patients. When I was in the nursery training I received very positive feedback and was told that they could tell I was a good nurse on my other unit and that I was doing really well. I even got thank you cards from families I had while over there. I was with a different preceptor the other week and she told me that I did an amazing job and gave a very detailed report. My other preceptor often talks over me while I’m giving report and makes me practice with her before giving report. I’m more than happy for any opportunity to learn but other preceptors have never had a problem with how I give report on this unit and when I’ve ask for feedback they always tell me that my reports are good.
I decided to talk to my preceptor about why she wouldn’t let me help with the sicker kid because it was really bothering me. This week she has been especially critical of everything I have been doing and won’t let me do anything on my own so I wanted to clear the air. I was hoping to get feedback on how I can improve and if I am where I should be at this point in my orientation. She basically told me I’m lacking critical thinking skills and time management/prioritization. She told me that if she had let me have more control in the assignment last night that the kid wouldn’t have been recovered. Which really made me sad when she said that. I really want to improve and do better but it seems like my preceptor has no faith in me and thinks I’m a bad nurse who shouldn’t be there.
Her response broke my heart and it made me feel like I’m a terrible nurse. It even made me consider transferring to a different floor. The nicu has always been my dream job and I’ve worked really hard to get a job on this unit. I’m devastated that this has been my experience on this floor so far. I know the turn over rate on the floor is very high due to bullying and the senior nurses make it very clear that newer nurses are not welcome there. I’m looking for advise of any kind. I’m just completely devastated and questioning if I should even be a nurse at this point. Thank you for reading and sorry this post is so long!
DowntheRiver
983 Posts
You're basically damned if you do, damned if you don't in this situation. I'm sorry. I've never seen a whole unit be toxic - usually it is only one or two people. I don't have any advice to add but I did want to say that I'm sorry you're in this situation and you don't deserve it.