NewtoNursing75

Thank you everyone for the support and insight! You simply do not know how much every single response means to me and how I appreciate you all for reading my venting and replying. I am forever grateful! I am in school to be a Nurse Practitioner and I absolutely love it. I need confidence and I need to feel confident, and I’m going to work on not letting the toxic energy I’ve been faced with break me. to respond to a few of the questions, Doctor: He has to verify everything I ask him if correct with our senior nurse. He does not communicate with me if he can just talk to either of the more experienced nurses, even though they are my patients. He has asked me if this is my first job more than he has asked me about my patients. And he often gets frustrated with me and goes on a lecture explaining that I’m going to be the reason major mistakes are made, when I ask questions. These are just a few examples. It makes me scared to make mistakes and I don’t think it’s possible to not make mistakes so I’m in a constant state of anxiety.

Hi! Thank you so much for reading and responding! Thank you! I am worried about leaving and afraid no one will want to hire me but I just don’t know if I can do this. To answer your clinic, task wise, it is much easier. So I work in a women’s health clinic that specializes in fertility. A lot of my job is just reviewing information and calling patients with medication instructions. There’s really no assessment or skills. But it’s more difficult because you’re not taught fertility in school, yet alone much about women’s health. So I have a 500 page guideline and all these new meds to learn and all these schedules I have to learn to make with minimal training other than the book! Its Monday-Friday too! So for someone who likes weekends off and understands the material, it would be awesome! For a new nurse, it’s a bit overwhelming and the patients are even much note different than your typical hospital or urgent care patients. the job is never really done and I call and see the same patients almost daily. Any little mistake can really affect their cycles and they are not always forgiving. but I do think urgent care would be a great place!

I am feeling lost. I know there will be some comments saying "suck it up", but I genuinely just need to write out how I feel. I have been a nurse since 2018, which is not very long. I was so excited to become a nurse. I excelled in school and genuinely felt ready to learn and grow in this field. I stayed at my first job for a year. In the beginning, it was excellent. I had the best imaginable preceptor ever, I made life long friends, received praise from my patients and superiors alike, and all together my positive personality and willingness to learn (and even teach to new staff) was recognized. I was known as the "happy nurse" because I was always happy! I felt like I belonged. Unfortunately, my unit was shut down. I worked in observation and once our management was switched over to the ER, everything went downhill. I relocated to the Special Care Nursery, which was an interesting experience. Though I once was interested in this area, the overwhelming and blatant horizontal bullying from my preceptors proved to be too much for me to handle. Though the manger thought I would be a great fit for the department, the staff openly told me that I was going to be hazed. I had a preceptor who would often joke about "whites only" in the nursery, and sat on her phone for majority of the shift. She would show me how to do something once, and that was it. She would get frustrated when I would ask questions or for assistance. She enjoyed grabbing me by the arm and chastising me in front of nursing students. It got to a point where a student walked up to me and told me "we don't think you should give up just because your preceptor is mean." I was so embarrassed because I was doing everything in my power to appear okay. I went from excelling to feeling so genuinely small. I was anxious and would find myself crying or vomiting the day before my shift. Even though I was receiving poor training, I did my best to hang on. I did not feel I was behind or "not learning", but was constantly told "I don't know why you're not getting it." I really only struggled with placing IVs. I just did not want to hurt those babies and the world of adults and newborns are so different. I could put an IV in adults and knew how to make them laugh or find a good vein with little difficulty. But babies are so small and I can admit that I was genuinely afraid to hurt them. My preceptor didn't care and would bring a group of nursing students in the room to watch me struggle and suffer to successfully place an IV. She would say "I just don't believe you could do this with adults but cannot with a baby" After two months of just genuine anxiety and feeling unwanted, I politely asked my prior manager to absorb me on the Telemetry floor she was moved to after the merge (I worked on a Cardiac Observation unit). She was more than happy to take me back. I apologized to the Nursery manager, expressed my concerns, and was told that I was well liked and would always be welcomed to come back when I was ready. I thought things would look up and they did! I was back home and they even reopened my unit under ER management. It was rough, as the patients were not appropriate for observation and the management did nothing to help, but I was with my team and confident in my skill. After receiving actively stroking patients without any report, 10 patients per nurse often at a time, and severely understaffed shifts, many of us noticed that our working conditions were not safe. We told the manager, she told us to adapt. Though I understood, it may me begin to explore my options. I was offered a position at a Magnet hospital in a similar unit. It has more competitive wages and benefits. They would pay more for my degree (I'm in school to be a nurse educator now), and it seemed like a better fit. I accepted that position. The DON, whom was known for being a huge bully and bad mouthing staff, trashed me and a few of my coworkers that decided to leave to better conditions after stating "I saved them" and calling all of us "lazy young nurses that just don't want to work." She made it known that she would do anything in her power to prevent us from working there ever again, despite placing in proper 2 weeks notices. Okayyyyy new job! It was okay while it lasted. It was a much bigger hospital and had much higher standards. I was learning and thriving. I loved being a nurse after that horrendous end experience I had at my prior job. The doctors were excessively harsh though. The doctors had no issues calling nurses stupid, incompetent, or worse. I was told by a physician never to call him again because I called twice regarding a patient that needed attention. I was even chewed out for calling an ICU physician (keep in mind I had no idea that there was a separate number for the ICU residents she was referring to because well I was new and the nurse I asked did not inform me plus we were not really even supposed to have trauma patients in observation). She read me to filth and threaten to tell my manager if I ever called her again. I was sick to my stomach because I genuinely just wanted to help my patient who was in distress and had been unattended without any orders. I got over it. Things were fine, I made friends and management even wanted to advance me into a charge nurse role in time. But once again, management changed and all hell broke loose. I stayed there for 6 months. My manager promised me she would decrease my hours, after a family crisis that definitely impacted my ability to work, and then decided that she would not be able to. I had no PTO to cover the schedule and knew the best thing to do as to not leave the unit short staffed was to resign. So I left. Now I work at a high profile clinic and I am just all together feeling hopeless. I was promised 10 weeks of training and received 5 because the only nurse trainer had to train another new nurse. I was told I wouldn't know what I was doing for my first 6 months but would eventually catch on. Everyone suggested that there was an excellent well trained older nurse that would train me. She is unable to because she is burned out and has no time. I do not feel supported and Im deathly afraid of making mistakes because every single mistake made means a verbal lashing and 8000 fingers pointing at you. Theres only one person there that makes an effort to help me and even she is looking for new employment. I am new to the clinic and nursing, and the new doctor, though this is his first job, makes sure that I know I'm incompetent and untrustworthy every waking moment of his life. The staff is nice but I genuinely find myself frustrated and depressed daily. I hate going to work. I once felt like I was a great nurse and was really living in my vocation. Now I just feel like a worthless failure. I have moved around to 3 jobs with no luck, while my friends have found places that they want to stay at for forever. Im in school and I love school, but I all together do not know how much longer I can continue to work as a nurse. I know I cannot keep moving positions after 6 months. I want this place to work out and maybe I'm just so nervous because I am new and know I will only learn through and experience and mistakes. I am just a really cautious person and I do not want to hurt or harm anyone. I am also a sensitive person and maybe that's my issue. Im young and feel like Im not living. I do not feel like I'm enjoying my life. And I can admit that I can be a bit dramatic, but I literally just cannot lol. Im sorry this is so long, but I just needed to vent. I try to stay positive and pray and meditate , but I can't shake this feeling of sadness. Any tips? I almost want to do something in nursing where I can advocate for a healthy work environment. I would love to be a nurse manager and set the standard for positive work behaviors. But I'm worried that working in a clinic will make it difficult for me to ever transition back to the hospital setting. I just feel so ?