Orientation process

I finished my first 4 weeks. They decided to have me concentrate on feeder/growers and then take my own assignments as staff of feeder/growers (possibly with nasal cannula or IVs). I've worked 2(ish) weeks on my own, so far it's been going well. I was already pretty familiar with time management (thank you Medical!) and my co-workers have been great to go to for questions.

For our NICU, the most we'd take as an assignment is 3 feeder/growers or 5 with an LPN.

Next month I am supposed to go back onto orientation for CPAPs and vents for another 4 weeks.

Thanks for the reply! I'm going to try to work out something similar - I'm a new grad and I just don't have the speed yet of the experienced nurses, so maybe working with the feeders/growers for awhile will help me get a better handle on that anyway, before I go back for vents.

You're a new grad? How is your orientation process being set up?

You opened a can of worms with that one. It's really not set up in any way and it's been really frustrating to me, actually. I've been precepting on the floor though only one of my preceptors gives me any teaching/feedback - the others generally spend their time chatting at the nurses' station or online shopping. I haven't really had any education about diagnoses or anything outside a giant binder full of unhelpful power points I was given. Thanks to the forums here, I bought the Merenstein and Gardner, so at least I'm learning on my own. In my eight weeks on the floor, I've had two meetings with the nurse educator, both of which I had to ask for myself. The first one was to ask for help, which I didn't get really, and the second one was yesterday to ask for more time, which I sort of got - I was already scheduled two shifts a week, so I'll have feeder/growers and some intermediate babies, but pick up a third shift per week for orientation. My first day on my own (with a resource person) is today actually, unless there is enough staffing to give me a preceptor, so wish me luck!

oh dear lord

We are a Level III unit and I came as a new grad. All new grads, and even nurses who are coming fresh into NICU from other units, get 16 weeks orientation on the unit, complete with weekly classes. We spent 4 weeks on a low acuity orientation (feeder growers all the way up to CPAPs), then 4 weeks on ''your own'' for experiential time, then 4 weeks on a high acuity orientation with SiPAP, vents etc. Of course, this all depends on what you have in the unit at the time and sometimes there were no vents, so that sucked. All in all, I think it was a great system. After orientation, the DCNs tried to give the newer nurses more high-acuity assignments to build their skills, and usually have someone stronger as a neighbor and/or following them.

I left that unit for a new job in a bigger unit in a large teaching hospital. I haven't been there very long, but I love it so far. 12 weeks with some classroom time.

I wish ours would give us some classroom time. As it is, I consider myself lucky to have been given time to go through AWONN's NOEP modules (for my last 10 days, I did 4 hrs bedside care and 4hrs module work). It was all self study and I still have 7 more to go through (my last day of orientation was today), but at least it was something.