new rn anxious

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Oct 2, 2013

Ask your manager if you can have some time with the staff development person to have a refresher/tune-up week, specifically to work on priorities.

You are also describing the distractibility that is characteristic of some learning disabilities. Ask your primary care for a referral for an eval and see if there are compensatory strategies you can learn to become more focused. You are not the only one like this, so don't be embarrassed to ask for help.

ekeeven · Oct 3, 2013

Wow I just read my last post! What horrible grammar lol, I wrote it at about 3 am my time lol... I guess what throws me off is when I have super " needy" pts that are always on there call lights... are techs are usually really busy and most if not my entire team are at high risk for fall risk so when they call out I really need to get in there right away... I have been on my own for a little over a month and I go home racking my brain about what I did wrong, was late on, or what I could have done differently... I know what needs to be done and what the priority is... I am just having a hard time when I am getting pulled different directions by call lights , family questions, drs rounding on pts, and social work rounding on pts... all these things seems to take forever and then I loose track of where I am at... some days I do better than other days but sometimes I just feel like I am so busy I am just going task to task and don't have the time to think about how to better schedule things. The day I was so late on antibiotics I honestly could not give an exact reason why I just know I was running my butt off all day with other antibiotics, heart rhythm issue, and frequent pain meds on a hospice patient.

ekeeven · Oct 3, 2013

I also did forget to say.. that particular day I was pulled to a different unit and spent have the time trying to find things

ekeeven · Oct 3, 2013

Also I did forget to say ...that particular day I was pulled to another unit and spent a lot of time trying to find things

NotMyProblem MSN, ASN, BSN, MSN, LPN, RN · Oct 3, 2013

I am so anxious because I am sometimes late giving medications.... today I was did not get a pts 11 antibiotic given till 13 I know how important antibiotics are... and its never a particular things that makes me late it just seems to happen everyone in a a while on busy days I just became.a nurse in may and its sept and I already think there is no way I can do this Mich longer.... I never get any good sleep BC I am so stressed . I have always dreamed of being a nurse and now that I am I am overwhelmed.

This is where you begin to build upon your critical-thinking skills, if, as GrnTea suggested, there are no learning issues preventing you from focusing. For example, with your patient who was scheduled to receive an 11am antibiotic: if that patient also had 9am meds (as most of them usually do in a hospital setting), give the 9am meds and the 11am antibiotic at 10am if there is not a very good reason why those two tasks cannot be combined. Don't just look at the scheduled treatment plans. Look ahead to see what things can be combined. If your patient asks for pain meds, check to see what else they have coming due that you can go ahead a knock out. Sometimes, you can give meds early in your nursing judgement because, to relieve a patient's pain and facilitate rest and comfort, you give upcoming meds 'now' (barring any necessary medication intervals), as a means of not disturbing the patient later so that they can rest.

When I receive my patient assignment, I review each of my patient's meds for the entire shift and make notations that say 'give this when I go in to give that'. Although we are computerized, we still get paper copies of orders and MARs so that we can plan our approaches (or not) accordingly. At the end of the shift, we place those papers in the shred bin.

After a while, crunching and bunching will become second-nature for you. As far as your feeling as though you cannot "do this much longer", I've been telling myself the exact same thing for 26 of my 27 years in nursing. There are times when I have the same feeling as far as holding out for one more hour during my 12-hour shift. But I manage to do so because I was too busy to quit.

To address the issue of losing sleep and worrying about what you didn't get around to doing, first and foremost, this is a 24-hour-a-day team approach. Do what you can, anything that gets thrown off-schedule, give it and notify the pharmacist of the situation so that they can reschedule the next dose. (Sometimes things happen). Then, go home and try to forget about it. You did your best. Turn that worry-session into a venting session. Come to ALLNURSES and create a thread called, "GUESS WHAT ELSE THEY DID TO ME AT WORK TODAY!", and vent away!! You will soon begin to realize that although you didn't like or agree with your assignment, you were actually able to handle it. That's what is your increasing ability to function in a fast-paced environment.