OMG!! Totally Petrified!

[RNShenanigator]

Ok, so I start clinical this week and I am sooooo scared. It is like everything I have learned in skills lab is gone.

There were only 4 of us that passed the skills checkoff without having to go to makeup lab and I was one of them. So why am I so petrified? I passed my first quarter with a 3.9 and passed all of the checkoffs on the first try.

I have never worked with patients before. Maybe it is because there is so much riding on this. This is the most important thing (other than raising my kids) that I have done in my life. All I have ever wanted was to be a nurse. I have worked so hard to get here and I am so afraid of screwing this up. I am so afraid of being ridiculed or looked down upon by the senior nursing students and professors if I make a mistake. I am afraid of being yelled at by the patients.

We had orientation at the LTC facility and I swear from the minute I walked in the door it is like I have forgotten everything. When they were walking us through how to do our paperwork I was so confused and I just sat there feeling like what am I doing? I don't understand? I know that everyone else said they didn't get it either, but this is the first time in my life that I truely feel lost and confused. I was so happy when they told me I would not have to come to make up lab. I passed our computerized ER lab with the dummy. I saved him when no one else could!

How do you get over the feeling of being scared and terrified? I know that I have to just think, "I am the nurse, I am the nurse," before seeing patients, but does that really work?

HELP!!!!

[quinceysmom]

I'm a tech on a telemetry floor in my last semester of nursing school and a nurse was nice enough to let me help in hanging an iv piggyback. It would seem that I should be pretty competent in doing them, but I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. She talked me through it and at the end gave me the best advice so far this year, and that's to "always remain confident even when you feel like you aren't." Hope this helps!

[patrick1rn, MSN, RN, NP]

Sounds like your one of those kinda students who is very book smart, but has problems applying your knowledge in clinicals. So you know what you have to work on

Good Luck

Pat

[Loadbetty]

Just starting myself (at a late age) I am scared too HOWEVER - I found in my "past life" (aviation-26 yrs) that it's a good thing to keep a HEALTHY fear of what you're doing - never to the point of not being able to function in a competent manner - just enough to not allow yourself to become complacent - and ALWAYS allow yourself to make mistakes - just make yourself learn from them and NEVER EVER been afraid to ask for help - hopefully my requests for help and knowledge will fall on the ears of a person that views it as an opportunity to pay it forward rather than a cynical little creep that views students as somehow a threat......ran into a few of those!!

Good luck!

[rubystar]

Take it one thing at a time, its surprising how much you remember. If you have any notes on how to do certain skills take them with you so that you can have a look over them. Nobody is going to think worse of you for going to check up on how to do things here and there, nurses do it all the time. But don't leave it till the last second because then they might get cranky especially if they told you they would be doing that particular thing for a patient today hours ago.