and I am not sure how to move forward with looking for a job. Do I add it to my resume? Is anyone going to hire me after getting terminated? Ive never been fired before and I am so disheartened that I got fired in my nursing career - if you can call it a career after 2 months. Do I just start over fresh like I have had no experience?
It was mostly related to skills, and my DON who fired me suggested I look online and review my skills, etc. so when I do start looking (which I need to do soon) I can say what happened, and that I have been reviewing my skills to make myself better.
Sometimes I got the feeling that they expected more from me as a brand new nurse than I was able to give. I was always there on time, asked questions, jumped in and tried new things, was willing to help - but its almost like they forgot what it was like to be a new nurse and took forgranted that I was a brand new nurse just learning the ropes. Regardless, my license wont be affected - just my bruised ego. I am especially concerned that since LTC seems to be the only place hiring "inexperienced" (less than a year experience) nurses and that is the field I was in that I am not going to find anyone that is understanding in another branch of nursing to take me in and give me another chance.
II am open to suggestions. This is fairly recent so I am still dusting myself off - but I would love to know if any other brand new nurses went thru this and how they coped with it. Thanks so much for the support.
so tough for a new nurse. i think you do have to put it on your resume-however-i would write it up as a mutually decided on termination as the ltc facility did not offer me a 3month preceptor-i took advantage of the chance to review and polish my skills. make sure they will give you a reference before you write that. if you apply out of range of that facility where don's are not part of a corporation and meet reg. i wouldn't put it down, ltc is tough and it is almost impossible to meet the time frames in the beginning. keep going forward and you will get there. ou passed clinical, exams, boards -this is an isolated incident specific to that facility. :)
That was bit rude.....put it on the resume, when asked be honest state how you assessed where you went wrong you diagnosed your self as having new nurse syndrome, your plan is to make the transition from new nurse with textbook knowledge, to a new nurse who can handle clinical situations, your intervention is you reviewed your clinical checklist, watched videos and you have 2month of experience, your evaluation is that you are equipped to take on the field of nursing.........ADPIE : )*
Such a bummer this seems to be a normal happening for alot of us. Sigh. Hoping it gets better.
I have been on orientation for 3 months and I have been told that I have one week left to prove myself capable of handling my time-management issues. In this same meeting my preceptor said that she trusts me with 5 pts but when our shift gets slammed with a bunch of admissions that she doesn't think I can handle 6-7. My preceptor also says that I'm good with my meds and assessments and should keep asking questions. I'm already working non-stop, not sitting at all during a shift until i find a chance to do charting, and skipping dinner so that I can try to get out on time because I'm getting yelled at since I can't do overtime while on orientation. I am cutting down more and more on pt interaction and making sure my patients actually know what they are taking and why. The cna's on our shift I are busy as heck and I end up doing their jobs as well (teamwork ) because our hospital has a no-pass zone with call lights and if I hear it beeping for more than a minute (usually less) I just do it myself. I get told I need to prioritize more, but if they say themselves that "everyone can get water/bedpan, so just do it" should I then just leave my pt's to soil themselves? I get told that it's ok to need help and ask questions, but then I get told that i need to work on time management skills until I can handle everything myself...I'm getting mixed messages especially since I see a veteran nurse who is a hot mess, gives horrible reports, and usually is late as well. It's not just her though, some days every nurse is late. I saw one of my preceptors stay behind for an hour every once in a while. My nursing supervisor says it's not just one preceptor who says I need time management skills...but even my preceptors are late some times.
Please...I need help. It took me months to get this job. I moved to a new town where I know no one, signed a lease, and finally moved out of my parents house...after 3 months I'm desperate for advice.
Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.
While this is off topic, I find it interesting that this same sentiment has been posted in the LTC forum. The only difference is those nurses have 25-40 patients. It's the nature of the business these days.
The original poster and I have very very similar situation on my first job. It was unjust and unfair. But I have already moved on. Still got the same question though if I should put the 2 months experience on my resume. I'll keep reading the responses on this thread....
Chin up love! And ignore the ignorant! I've been a nurse for nearly 15 years. New grad with MSN/CNL certification and I WANT LTC to improve outcomes for our elders. No facility in my area is open to my position though, because of the MSN! Go figure! I've been terminated as well, after nearly 7 years of dedicated service. God closes doors and opens windows.
Honestly, the TLC facility obviously had some unreal expectations. However, having said that... I do think that LTC facilities are awesome for learning. In them, many new nurses get awesome skill sets, and you do a wide variety of things. I was doing cath's nightly, dealing with critical patients, IV's, IM injections, TB's, vaccines, wound care, TBI's and dealing with the lovely psych patients who walked down the halls naked on a routine basis, lol. It set me up to be a nurse with a highly expansive resume, and you've not lived till you are changing catheters on elderly patients while they are trying to beat the snot out of you, lol.
Sounds like it was more a bad fit for you as a new nurse, but dont write them off. With a good preceptor or trainer, and the right facility, a LTC can give you a better skill set than alot of hospitals can, and you can take them throughout your career to any job you care to transfer to.
Sorry you went through that but do not devalue yourself. Many of us nurses do NOT eat their young and I hope you find someone that is patient with you and enjoys teaching up and coming nurses. I know I love being a preceptor.
and as an additional add... you also learn awesome time management skills when you have that many people to pass medications for in a timely fashion. :)
After 6 pages I doubt I'm going to add too much to this conversation, but here I go anyway.
I too was almost literally fired after two months on my first job too!!
The short of it was, I did nothing wrong, but the nurse/RN/Manager couldn't be bothered with "facts". It was quite amusing when she brought one of the other nurses into the termination meeting and she told me that I was being fired watching the blank stare when I asked if she had even bothered to read the applicable nursing note. She hadn't and while I had a great case for wrongful termination, I left like a rat off a sinking ship and never looked back!! That manager was eventually fired and the nurse who was in the meeting took her place and became a great reference for me!! It's funny how these things work out.
Yeah, being a new nurse is terrifying because you don't know enough, and it's very difficult to find the right mentors who are willing to be patient and 'have your back' when it really counts. Keep being nice to your patients, accept it when they say something is wrong, try to find a couple solutions on your own, then find the people who react well to your problems and (almost) worship the ground they walk on!!
How did you graduate if your clinical skills suck? Go into psych or something..
Novo, I looked at your profile info and saw that you actually posted quite a few questions about psych nursing... you even said you were interested in it, so I am surprised that you would be so dismissive of psych nursing and consider it to be a branch that doesn't require clinical skills. Being dismissive of others' specialities is basically engaging in workplace violence and bullying. Are you a bully? Are you going to be one of those nurses who believes yourself more important than others because you personally value one type of care over another? Arrogance, divisive attitudes, and irrational judgment are what "suck". They're dangerous and get patients killed. Dismissing a speciality is not acting as a responsible team member- because you NEED a team to provide excellent care- and if you truly feel that way about psych nursing, perhaps you need to reconsider whether you are ethically and intellectually appropriate for this field.
"Clinical skills" involve the HOLISTIC gamut, not just the ability to read an EKG or do wound care. Unless you work in a variety of units, you will not be able to master every single aspect of care. This is why there are specialities. A GI nurse is no better or worse than a nurse in dermatology. They are both legitimate and very crucial positions which require a high level of education. Psychiatric nursing is an incredibly rewarding and especially important speciality in healthcare. It may be initially easier to see a literal bullet wound than it is to see the figurative wound experienced through emotional/mental trauma... you may believe that physiological needs supersede the emotional (and at times they can when you think about critical care/acute trauma-related incidents), but take a look at the world around you... all of the suffering... and try to convince yourself how emotional and mental needs are really not important. So much of what we humans do in life is all about feeding our emotional needs and (obviously) filtered through a mental/emotional process. And if you need to review the connection between emotional, mental, and physical health, reread the text you used in your nursing fundamentals class.
As a psych nurse, I see myself as someone who protects some of the most misunderstood and vulnerable patients in my hospital. I may not ever straight cath someone (and I never wanted to in the first place), but I still understand the medsurg/patho implications behind it. I still review labs. I still have to understand the complexity of polypharmacy. I still have to perform some basic medsurg-type tasks. My job is to examine an extra and different layer of complexity in care, in addition to physiological needs, not to ONLY understand that particular layer.
I am so proud of and grateful for all nurses whose specialities lie in areas which I just can't do because they give me the willies or don't interest me as much as psych does. We are all necessary and we all need to support each other because when we do, we are supporting humanity as a whole. #solidarityandrespect
P.S.- Novo, you've got to start working on your holistic "clinical skills"... especially if you ARE actually interested in psych nursing. I advise you to read the ANA Scope and Standards of Practice and the ANA Code of Ethics.
Take heart. Look for a facility that offers a graduate orientation. Stick with it even without that. When I got my first job, I worked nights with one sometimes two nurses. One night I had the pediatric side plus three adult patients, two of which had signed dnr's. You guessed It, the third adult was not breathing, no heart rate at hourly rounds. Called the code, started the CPR. When the house MD got to the floor, he pointed to me to get the patient's chart. I did, leaving the other two nurses I the room helping the code team. Both knew him as he was a frequent patient. I had just met him in report and first rounds. I got written up and pulled to days for "reorientation". I proceeded to work circles around the dayshift because I was used to magi get ten plus patients on nights and days only had four at the most. It lasted three days instead of three weeks like it was supposed to.
) because our hospital has a no-pass zone with call lights and if I hear it beeping for more than a minute (usually less) I just do it myself. I get told I need to prioritize more, but if they say themselves that "everyone can get water/bedpan, so just do it" should I then just leave my pt's to soil themselves? I get told that it's ok to need help and ask questions, but then I get told that i need to work on time management skills until I can handle everything myself...I'm getting mixed messages especially since I see a veteran nurse who is a hot mess, gives horrible reports, and usually is late as well. It's not just her though, some days every nurse is late. I saw one of my preceptors stay behind for an hour every once in a while. My nursing supervisor says it's not just one preceptor who says I need time management skills...but even my preceptors are late some times. 
mrstookielpn
165 Posts
Awesome story!