Treefroggirl

Thank you everyone for your replies. The nurse manager who is in charge of my training is back from vacation this week so I will get to finally talk to her on Wednesday. My precepter actually told me she likes to orient because she doesn't get assigned all the hard trauma pts. Sad. You are all right, she would be the type to throw me under the bus, I don't doubt that for a second. And this doesn't feel like a safe situation to me. Thank you again and I will definitely keep you posted on what happens.

Hi there, I just recently started a job in a 40 bed level 1 trauma center ICU. I came from a small hospital with a 5 bed ICU, so the acuity of patients I'm used to dealing with is a lot different. My first actual day in the new ICU was Monday and I had been assigned the same precepter for the full 8 weeks. As soon as we hit the floor, she said, ok, you take this patient and I will take the other. I was surprised, but figured she would be with me and there if I needed her. Wrong. I was completely on my own, no orientation to the room, unit, equipment, nothing. I mentioned that I thought we would be working together with the patients the first day or so, and her response was that she doesn't believe I would learn anything by "following her around all day". I'm trying to learn the computer charting on top of all this and was so far behind it was ridiculous, she didn't help me get caught up at all. We took lunch at 2p (had started at 7am), supposed to be 30 min. She came back 1 hr and 15 minutes later. I spent my lunch break in my car close to tears. The second day was yesterday, only she gave me BOTH patients and she spent the day on the phone talking to her friend, husband, everyone and sat there all day doing nothing or she was no where to be found. No assistance at all until about 6pm she helped give the patient a bath and clean up because she didn't want to have to stay late. (her words). So I just kept interupting her phone calls to get her attention if I had a question. She didn't even walk into the patients room unless I told her, "hey come here". I'm totally frustrated and exhausted. Does this sound extreme to you all, or am I just being a baby? I hate to go to the team leader or someone because I don't want to look whiney or something. The nurse educator who is in charge of my orientation is on vacation, so I have no idea what to do. The thought of going back there is making me sick. The problem though, this is my dream job and I know I would love it if I had someone who was willing to teach me and help me learn. I'm scared to death of when I get a patient with an ICP or something like that since I've never even seen one in my career, will I have to figure that out on my own too? (sarcasm. ) Any thoughts?