NicuNightRN

I've also been an RN for about 8 months now. I have not been asked to be in charge, but in one of my final evals on orientation, my mgr said that they want me to start considering it later this year. I know that at this point, I am nowhere near rea...

Congrats, and welcome to the wonderful world of NICU!! The best advice I can give you is to always be open to learning new things, and never stop asking questions!! I graduated last May and LOVE working with the babies. We have several guys on our...

Where do I even start with my night last night? I had 3 babies (I work in NICU), 2 were stable, and one was needing to be intubated. In the hour that I was there before she got intubated, she had 3 apnea episodes, one requiring bagging to get her b...

A friend of mine wrote a paper on neonatal pain management and assessment in nursing school, and I believe she found a wealth of information. Now that the medical community admits that infants do actually feel pain, I would imagine plenty of article...

Night shift is certainly much busier than day shift gives us credit for! We may not have as many visitors or docs rounding...but we still have plenty of paperwork with the MARs and lab sheets. Plus in the NICU, we draw most of the labs on nights an...

My 6 month anniversary as an RN was January 30, and it passed without me realizing until a couple of days ago! Time has flown by, and I absolutely love what I am doing. I work in Neo ICU, which is what I always wanted to do. There is such a huge v...

I'm Sarah, a May 2005 graduate, and RN as of July 30, 2005! I work in a Neonatal ICU, which I absolutely love. I am officially completely off orientation as of the first of the year, and though it's scary at times, I love my job!! As far as boards ...

My preceptor and I had the same pts when I was orienting, and as I got better, I took on more of the load and she took on less, until I eventually had the full pt load. But even when I had the full load and had been on orientation for a couple of mo...

I graduated last May, started working in June, and have been an RN since the end of July. I have been officially off orientation since December (my NICU has a long orientation process, split up so that we can get used to working with low-mod risk ba...

My team leaders have been great about going around the unit and seeing who needs help with anything. Other nurses also are good about helping anyone who seems overwhelmed. One night this week we were expecting 6 new admissions, so everyone was pitc...

I think that being a new grad is quite an adjustment, and takes some getting used to. But at the same time, if you know you are not happy, and don't see that changing soon, I think it would be best to you to find another position, as long as nothing...

Oh, and being off orientation is definitely scary...but don't forget you are not without plenty of resources! I had my orientation split up, and took care of low-moderate risk patients for a couple of months before completing high risk orientation i...

It really does take a special person to be a nurse. You have to be able to do 25 things at once, and anticipate what you will need to do soon yet, but don't currently need to do...all the while showing compassion for your patients and their families...

I personally don't think it matters...but I have noticed that some nurse managers think it does. When I was in school, there was talk of a lot of units hiring only BSN RNs, and the manager of the unit where I currently work no longer wants to hire a...

Sunny 17, This sounds very familiar!! I also graduated in May, and have been in a level 3 NICU since June. I oriented to Level 2 and worked just with Level 2 babies until recently...the oriented to Level 3 in December and have been taking those patie...

I don't know why NICU nursing has been my calling...but I knew when I started college that the NICU was the place for me. I had a couple of friends growing up who were former preemies. One had been born weighing 1 1/2 pounds, and you would not know...

I am a relatively new grad (May '05) and an RN in a Level III NICU. My hospital did not hire new grads for years, but has started to do so in the last year or so. I was lucky enough to have a NICU clinical my last semester of nursing school, and wh...