New nurse, first job starts in a few weeks....

Specialties Med-Surg

Published

I just graduated from Nursing School in May and will be starting my career on a med-surg floor!! My question is what can I do before starting that will be most helpful? Should I concentrate on skills (IV insertion, dressing changes,...) or medications or documentation?

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Specializes in Certified Med/Surg tele, and other stuff.

If your hospital has an IV team, I would put that on the bottom of my list and focus more on organization. Do you have a brain sheet that you will be using to help keep you organized?

IMO, I would focus on labs values, meds, and keeping up with the orders. If you have done dressing changes in the past and did well, you will do ok on the floor as well. Every dr has a way of doing things, so it might be a learning curve to do it their way, but again, it would not be my primary focus if possible.

Everything else will fall into place once you know how the facility and MD's operate.

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I'll be responsible for IVs so I'll start there. There is a "brian sheet" for everyone that is supplied by the floor. I am concerned about time management, nursing school didn't really focus on that until our last rotation (5 weeks- really only 4). I've met a few of the nurses on the floor and they are tenured for the most part so I'm hoping to learn from their experience!!! Thank you for your response, I'm sure you're right about it falling into place. I just have to "jump in" and enjoy learning everything!!

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Definitely focus on time management and organization, it's the biggest challenge for most new nurses

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