FrustratedExStudent

Hey guys, I graduated in December and passed my NCLEX in February. Maybe because of COVID, it took until September to actually get an interview, and I didn't start my residency until last month. I've been on the floor a little over a month, about 8 shifts so far (hours were limited due to online webinars and such). The whole time, there have been a few little mistakes every day. The last three weeks, it's been fairly smooth, but he's been giving me some independence and autonomy this week, and it might be a mistake, but whenever he's present, I feel rushed. I or my preceptor will catch them before I go through with them, so none of them actually cause a problem. However, yesterday was so bad that it made me question my career choice. I've hung maybe a half dozen IVPBs so far, but I hung an antibiotic yesterday and made a dozen stupid mistakes during the process. I kept forgetting to unlock things, forgot to flush, and tried connecting the secondary line to the proximal port because the lines were all tangled. I beat myself up about it for the rest of the night, and got a horrible night's sleep because of it. I'm at work right now. Today, I forgot to cut a pill in half, but noticed on my own and reconciled it. I also opened the OmniCell and pulled out a controlled drug, counted it correctly, but then forgot to put an extra pill back in. I had to grab the manager to teach me how to access Medication Management so I could return it. I also got flustered when trying to manage multiple lines on my patient and was programming the wrong pump (one that was not running) until my preceptor pointed it out. I'm starting to think I'm too incompetent to be a nurse. I can tell my preceptor is getting fed up. He stands there and stress sighs constantly when I'm working on something. He's a really laid-back, young guy, so I know if he's getting frustrated with me, it must be pretty bad. What do I do?

I'll be at the same campus, but with the next cohort. The hardest part of all this is going to be explaining to my family and especially my girlfriend, who have all been cheering me on about finally getting my degree, that I've failed them. Guess I should've waited a few weeks to mail graduation invitations.

My only option at this point is to retake the class and graduate next semester. This has really discouraged me from going into nursing, though. I haven't eaten and have barely slept in three days. It's genuinely depressing.

Depends on your definition of "worked out". I had a meeting with the clinical coordinator and the course coordinator on Friday. They decided that, because I was kicked out of the practicum, it's a clinical failure and therefore a course failure. As a result, I can't graduate this semester.

Okay, I'm currently running on traumatic adrenaline and crippling depression, so forgive me if this comes out jumbled. Today, I was at my practicum; I just have a couple of clinical days left before I graduate. We were on the resus team and attending a C-section in the OR. A nursing student in an earlier semester from another college was in the room with me. I had seen several C-sections before, but she hadn't, so I was telling her about the procedure. When it came time for time-out, they said "time out" and we stopped talking. When the baby was delivered, we had started discussing the procedure again, and she asked us to quiet down. We did. Then when the baby was on the mother's chest, the surgeon was suturing the incision, and conversations had begun around the room, the student started asking me questions about my nursing school and talking about other procedures she'd seen. The circulating nurse became angry and asked us to leave the room. I returned to my floor and continued caring for my patient for several hours, regretting the incident but not realizing it had been so serious, when the unit manager approached me and asked me to come talk to her. I went into her office, and she said that she heard that we were talking in the OR and told me that I have to leave the hospital and said that I wouldn't be allowed to return at this time. Now, I'll start out by saying that I know it wasn't professional to have a conversation in the OR. It was really stupid behavior, and it didn't occur to me that it was disrespectful until it was too late. I've never been disciplined for anything in nursing school, and I always try to keep my nose clean. Am I being unreasonable, or does this punishment sound a bit excessive? I paid my way through nursing school on my own, kept a 4.0, was never tardy or absent in class or clinical, always got high marks on all clinical evaluations without a single disciplinary issue or medical mistake, and always sought out nursing tasks and got stressed out when there was too much downtime. There's a student in my class who has been arrested twice for shoplifting while in nursing school, and she's still in the program. Another student was caught sneaking into an empty med-surg room and taking a nap on the bed multiple days during the semester, and she made a medication error that semester; she's still here too. But my nursing career is over before it even starts because of one instance of unprofessional behavior that I didn't realize was a big issue until after the fact? I drove to my nursing department - barely breathing on the 45-minute drive - in order to meet with our clinical coordinator. One professor was trying to comfort me and told me that the coordinator is very pro-student and isn't going to destroy my future over a single incident when there had never been any warnings or communication of issues before being kicked out. However, when I finally got a chance to meet with the coordinator and another professor, they made things sound extremely dire, as if I'm likely going to be ejected from the program for this. They didn't say that outright, but they're meeting with the class' coordinator and deciding my fate tomorrow, and their wording and tone makes me feel hopeless about the outcome. I'm absolutely horrified. I worked so hard to get here, and this seems like such an overblown situation to end someone's college career one month before graduation, when I've already sent out invitations and now have to explain to my loved ones that I'm a miserable failure. You might all disagree, and kicking me out of practicum might have been totally justified; I don't know. I just don't have anyone to talk to about this; I'm feeling genuinely depressed right now, and I needed to get this all off my chest to people who have been through nursing school. I'm open to any advice. Thank you for reading this.

Hi, nurses. I just made this account in order to write my second post. Despite a spotless record as a nursing student, an incident today at clinical may have forever crushed my hopes of ever becoming a nurse. So I'm not a nurse, and I may not even be a nursing student after tomorrow, but I had to come here and seek advice from people in this profession.