Not good enough to be an RN

Nurses Stress 101

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I have been struggling with my feelings lately that I am just too dumb to be a good nurse. I have been a nurse for 4 yrs so I am not a new grad. I have worked in telemetry, med/surg, and ICU. I left ICU 6 months ago and I am currently in hospice. I felt inadequate in every specialty, including where I'm at now. I don't think I can even perform simple nursing tasks properly. I try very hard to do a good job, I read current nursing literature, and I have bought books to reference and improve. Yet, I still keep messing up in my clinical practice. I love nursing and caring for my patients, but I am just not good enough. I am considering just quitting nursing altogether and returning to school for something else.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

You've been a nurse for four years and you've worked in four specialties. You keep switching jobs. That right there is your problem. It takes about two years for a new nurse to become competent, and that assumes staying in the same job. Try staying in this job for at least two years. It takes about that long to learn the basics and to develop some transferrable skills.

It is truly possible that you cannot even perform simple nursing tasks properly because you moved on to the next job before you properly learned the job in front of you. Give this job a solid two years before you quit nursing and go back to school. I'm betting that you will become much more competent and confident. At the very least, it will give you time to save money for tuition.

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Were you trained properly from the beginnning? If you are repeating the same mistakes over and over, of course your skills will lag. This is why, there are so many differences in nurses abilities. Some take to the info fast, and some don't. Those that don't aren't always able to get it or need more time. They don't always get more time. Nursing really requires skills to be improved on and utilized in a decent amount of time, after you learn the book stuff. I don't think you are dumb. I think your training didn't go the way it should have. Did you ask for help? Were you supported early on?

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We'd love to help but you are not giving us much to go on!

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I'm not currently a nurse, but as I left nursing school 10 years ago because I felt I wasn't good enough and I also left studying to become a dance teacher prior to that and felt that often in my career I ended up in after nursing (behavior therapist), how much of this is factual that you are not good enough and how much of it is your perception? You mentioned that you have changed specialties multiple times, were all of these switches due to you not feeling good enough or have you been asked to leave? Often we are much harder on ourselves than the reality of the situation is. Is there a part of nursing you do enjoy that maybe you could specialize in or focus more on? Maybe you are better as a teacher rather than bedside nursing?

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If you passed Anatomy, which you must have, and the NCLEX, which you must have, you are not too dumb to be a nurse.

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Thank you everyone for your responses. No I have not ever been asked to leave, I left by choice. I have never been disciplined or reprimanded for my work. Much of my feelings of inadequacy have to do with myself. I feel like an imposter faking it and getting by. I feel that I make a lot of mistakes, and I miss obvious nursing assessments. Like for instance, if I have a patient all night and they have many issues first thing in the morning I blame myself for not properly managing them. Seems like a lot of my patients always have issues after my shift, and I don’t understand why I am not catching it/ overlooking them. I think the day shift nurses hate following me. I have been trying to stay positive and increase my knowledge. I just took a certification class for wound care. I made new report sheets and check off list to improve my assessment skills. I have been trying to stay on top of medicating my patients. But I just feel I am not improving. I am beginning to believe I am not cut out for nursing.

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Specializes in BA, MS, aspiring RN.

You may want to read about Imposter Syndrome. You have worked in some complex areas of nursing. I hope you have support or a potential mentor at your place of employment.

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On 11/5/2019 at 7:35 AM, ilooc72 said:

Thank you everyone for your responses. No I have not ever been asked to leave, I left by choice. I have never been disciplined or reprimanded for my work. Much of my feelings of inadequacy have to do with myself. I feel like an imposter faking it and getting by. I feel that I make a lot of mistakes, and I miss obvious nursing assessments. Like for instance, if I have a patient all night and they have many issues first thing in the morning I blame myself for not properly managing them. Seems like a lot of my patients always have issues after my shift, and I don’t understand why I am not catching it/ overlooking them. I think the day shift nurses hate following me. I have been trying to stay positive and increase my knowledge. I just took a certification class for wound care. I made new report sheets and check off list to improve my assessment skills. I have been trying to stay on top of medicating my patients. But I just feel I am not improving. I am beginning to believe I am not cut out for nursing.

Ruby got it right in the first place: you haven't given yourself enough time to become competent in any particular area before jumping ship and finding a different area to be new and inexperienced at. Good nurses aren't born, and they don't just fall into the specialty that's 'right' for them and excel at it immediately. They build their skills through education, practice, and time. You aren't giving yourself the benefit of the latter two.

You also seem to be extremely hard on yourself. You need be kinder to yourself - when you think you've made a mistake, try to imagine how you would treat a well-meaning coworker who did the same, and then try not to be substantially harsher on yourself. Encourage yourself to do better rather than attempting to beat yourself into doing better.

Also, when you make a mistake, do you talk about it specifically with anyone or do you recoil in shame? Staying shamefully silent is a mistake. Instead, find a trusted and experienced coworker and review the situation with him or her, trying to see what you could have done better and what was unavoidable. Debrief. Then let it go. If you don't have a coworker that you can discuss these situations with, discuss them with anyone: a friend, family, a therapist, etc. Leave out the identifying info, but discuss your actions. Don't let them become a lump that sits in your chest always, too awful to talk about.

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