Accolay

Just breathe, man. Everything is normal. Everyone has been exactly where you are right now. Your BSN isn't lifelong- you will eventually finish. Eat that less-than-ideal-score because what you've now learned the magic of group work and how to deal with it next time: Trust but verify. Schedule a little social life. Schedule a little extra sleep. Schedule "me time." Or else you are looking at burn out. Maybe there isn't room for a romantic relationship right now, but there will be in the future. This too shall pass and you'll be content when looking back. Suck up the once a month mentorship meeting and get them over with. Get what you can out of them and move on. Only four left. It's your first year of nursing. It's going to be challenging. It will get better as long as you keep at it. Read and know your institutions policies, form good habits now so they will last your career. Master less intense things such as medication administration and work your way up to more difficult tasks. Learn from mistakes and forgive yourself for them. You will get more comfortable talking with providers- every conversation is an opportunity to learn something. It's ok if you need help. Make sure you ask for it before mucking something up, but also make sure you have used all your resources first, or at least try to find the answer (emergencies notwithstanding) There is nothing worse than a lazy coworker asking for help or answers they can easily find for themselves, either in policy or other work related literature- it's always the same people. Lastly, leave work at work. You're not superhuman. You're developing a career. It takes time, Padawan.

Expressing an oath towards a situation isn't a big deal to me, especially considering I grew up in the Navy. Swearing directed at people is where I draw the line. After all, you might be "happier, healthier and more honest" if you do swear: People Who Swear May Be Happier, Healthier And More Honest | HuffPost Life

What a horrible way to die. I don't want to fully blame the nurse, since there were many things that should have been in place to stop this accident from happening... but man... if you don't know the difference between versed and vec you might want to go ahead and look something up. It's like they took a brand new nurse and let them run with it or something. Makes me wonder how orientation is with other nurses there?

If my math is correct, and only assuming the easy 50 minute commute and working a .6/8day per month schedule, that's still over 13 hours of driving per month. 32 hours and more of driving assuming working a .6 if considering that they are all the long commute of two hours. Driving is inherently dangerous, the more driving, the more chance of an accident. And you're trying to do it some of the time with little or no sleep. Eesh. You could pick up almost a full extra week of hours to work for a job closer to home. Maybe it's because everyone is commuting 2+ hours per day? /s So I'm thinking your job has to be in one of four areas: CA, NY, IL or WA. TX?? I'm just curious. There is another solution: move closer. Sure rents are more expensive, but the cost in maintenance of your vehicle and the cost of time would offset that price. What is your time worth to you? It's ok, we know that's not going to happen. So my takeaway from your post only reconfirms my bias towards long commutes, and that is that they are absurd. No offense.

::where's my soapbox?:: It doesn't matter. All I have to say is this administration and the party in power passed a tax cut this year for the absolute richest Americans and cut the corporate rate by 14%. Raise your hand if you're seeing any of those corporate savings trickle down for you? I didn't think so. Also, one side of the political system could have stepped up sometime in the last eight years to improve the Affordable Care Act to actually make it affordable for the middle class instead of attempting to repeal it and replace it with nothing over 70 times. Just sayin'.

Are you talking about normal everyday anger, angry that they are in the hospital angry about condition etc, or are you talking about mental health?

Yes. Call in. Not safe. Especially with that commute. Can I get an honest answer why a one way 2+ hour commute seemed like a good idea? I am trying to understand why this is acceptable to some and how they rationalize that type of commute.

If it really is that much paperwork, then many of these shredding services can come to you in a large shredding truck. Call around to see if they offer such service.

Don't pigeonhole yourself to one job because you think you wont be able to handle a job you want. While you're out of work, continue to work on your nursing knowledge for a few hours a day- don't get rusty. This is not a vacation! Your issues may deal with The Policy. My experience has revealed that sometimes even resource or senior personnel on the unit don't know what the true written policy states. I don't think they teach the new guys about these enough. Next job these are a must read. Often they spell out solutions to problems word for word. If it were me I'd still go with the grievance, time and guarantee notwithstanding. You presumably payed your union dues so might as well take advantage of their help. Or at least some closure and maybe help the next guy to come along.

Complaint Gateway Click the top box. How's it going OP?

I see you're in NY. You'll have to look what jobs are paying and see about tuitition reimbursement rates too. If it were me I'd find a hospital I'd eventually want to work in as a nurse if possible. Where I live, when I went from a nursing home nursing assistant job to a hospital nursing assistant job, I went from about $12/hr to about $16 an hour with about half as much work at the hospital. It was magical and very easy to stand out as a good assistant. And that $12/hr was the same rate I'd started at three and a half years before since we were on a wage freeze. The hospital was on a hiring freeze and I'd been trying to get a job there for a very long time. As mentioned- hospital schedules are 24/7/365. You'll likely be on an every-other-weekend schedule at the hospital and could also be working nights. And remember the equation: y ∝ x where y, the size of poop is directly proportional to x, the size of the human. Cleaning up a wee person is way less taxing than cleaning up a confused giant human person. Just wait until a confused adult puts their hands in it before you understand what I'm saying.

Yeah, I can kinda see it that way. But however odd or ire-provoking it may be, it all depends on an institutions policies. Seniority is an incentive so employees stay with a company. Policies like this are normally covered at orientation. If those rules don't suit an employee they can always find a job with more agreeable terms. Free will, baby!

I still don't understand what happened with the insulin. But I gather it was a med error of some kind, you recognized it as a problem, took steps to protect your patient, you wrote yourself up on it, hopefully corrected the deficiency and heard nothing back about it again. As far as the surgery prep without orders.... If I was told at report that surgery is in the AM, the patient tells me they are having surgery in the AM, and the note says there is going to be surgery in the AM, I would have gone ahead and done the prep too even if there weren't orders for surgery prep. I think you made the right decision. It wouldn't have made sense not to do a surgery prep given the information you had. And it would have made you look like an idiot if you hadn't done the prep. Yeah, we need orders for stuff, but it's not like a night before prep is a big deal, unless we're talking about bowel prep or something. We do a CHG wipedown and NPO. From all you're telling us it sounds like you got the shaft. It doesn't sound like you made any horrible do-not-pass-go mistakes. Better to move on to make some lemonade with these lemmons as others have suggested. Only thing is I would have probably gone the union route just on principle, but I would have declined to work under that manager again. I'm not sure how to tactfully list this job experience on a resume, but I think you need to list it? Maybe others will chime in with suggestions? Good luck in your job search.

Might want to rethink your strategy if you have children or other family that will have to go through your stuff someday. I've had to do this for a few relatives. One house we had paperwork professionally shredded- 900 pounds of it!

Depends on the institution's policies. If it were my facility, you keep your senority no matter where you go.