Night shift Lpn feeling clueless

[Zoily85]

I've been an Lpn for about 4 months and I felt more confident in my 2nd month than I do now. Last month my RN supervisor said to me that I call him for stupid reasons. I'm so confused. I need to know when it's appropriate to call my supervisor, what I can leave for the morning shift but still be proactive . Please help!

[ThatGuyNurse]

On your shift do you have any other LPN/LVN coworkers? If so I would suggest you reach out to them because all nurses have been where you are. You are not expected to graduate and know everything.

When you make a call to a supervisor with a question it is their job to answer. What tends to frustrate me is when I get a call from the same nurse with the same question more than once.

The Nurse that tells you they have learned all they need to know already is either stupid or lying.

Keep on fellow Night Owl!

~Nurse K

[Zoily85]

Thank you, there's one nurse I tend to call but when he's off I don't have a friendly nurse that I can ask. At this point I'm going to have to take the nasty attitude but atleast I'll have the piece of mind that I reported it and that the resident is safe. Once I know what warrants a phone call it would make my job so much easier.

[LibbyJo]

Can you sit with him and go over some reasons you've called in the past and why they were not appropriate ? Just a blanket statement that they were "stupid" isn't very helpful for him to say. I'd try to find out what he considers important and see if there's some guidelines in writing somewhere.

[samwaddell365]

Your Nursing Judgment, and for that matter nursing license, are the only things you need to worry about. You are a new nurse and you are going to have to ask allot of questions before you feel confident enough to handle situations on your own. We have all been there and all gotten through it, I would agree with ThatGuyNurse, try to find support with your fellow LPNs, that helped me immensely when I first started. There are always going to be negative attitudes in nursing, but the important thing is protecting your patients/residents, protecting yourself, and protecting your license. So if your nursing judgment tells you to report it to your supervisor, than that's what you need to do...even if that means shaking off the negative comments. After that you can have peace knowing you did what was right.