Nuked

Psych I've been OK with. My recent adventure into med-surg was not. I was let go at the end of orientation, I wound up sending a patient to ICU the morning of the day I was let go. I understand that newbies get dumped on often, but this was more than that. Perhaps med-surg with tele was too much of a jump for me personally, who knows. Nothing "wrong" with being a psych nurse, but opportunities are not as varied or as available in that particular area. I come from working radiology (nuclear medicine), so staying organized to a certain degree has always been required for me. I also passed nursing school and was among the first in my class to take and pass my boards so I'm not totally inept, but clearly my skills are not where they need to be. If I can't get better, then perhaps you're correct and nursing isn't for me, but I'm 41 and my brain isn't as malleable as it once was. I also don't have any extra money, so it is what it is for the time being and I need to do the best with what I have.

Supply your own adjective. I graduated from a challenging AS RN program in 2014. I had trouble finding employment, eventually landing at a few sub-acute/LTAC type places doing part-time work before finally landing a benefit eligible hospital job working acute inpatient geriatric psych. I worked there for nearly two years when I resigned over administration attempting to force me to float to a med-surg unit and take a patient assignment with no orientation to med-surg or the unit itself. Shortly after, I managed to get a job on a telemetry unit (yes, irony) at a great local hospital. It was to be a big change. 12 hour shifts instead of 8s. Days instead of evenings. Med-surg w/telemetry instead of psych. I was going to participate in their "LTC to med-surg" program. It all sounded great. Then my gf of 6 years was diagnosed with breast cancer and started chemo. Then the education person at my new hospital went out on leave for over a month. Then COVID and quarantine and we've got my gf's 10 and 13 year old sons home all day and we have to help with schoolwork. Big changes pretty much daily at the hospital. I'm not keeping up. I'm only taking 2-3 patients and it seems like one of them gets transferred to a higher level of care every single shift. This continues. Through my not pushing hard enough for help from education/admin and hospital education/admin being overwhelmed with COVID changes and issues there, we parted ways at the end of my orientation period. I just couldn't do it. No matter what system I used or notes I took I couldn't juggle competently enough. Would always drop a ball somewhere along the way. I wasn't fast enough so I always felt rushed. While there were distractions aplenty and enough blame to go around, the simple fact is that I've struggled with multi-tasking effectively and "time management" all along. Getting organized doesn't come naturally but I can do it. I am frequently the last out the door on a shift though. So these aren't entirely new problems, it's just that the last job brought it all together and put a big bright spotlight on it. Within a few days I'll be leaving on a travel/contract assignment because nobody is hiring nurses around me yet for anything. It'll be night shift psych, which will be somewhat new but I'm confident I can do. What I don't know is how I get better from here in a general sense professionally. I feel as though I squandered a great opportunity with that last position and I don't want that to happen again. How do I improve my speed/"time management" or ability to multi-task? I thought it would just start to come together with time and experience, but it doesn't seem to be working out that way for me. I'm just trying to figure out my best way forward, because I feel a bit like a failed/failing nurse at this point in a certain sense because I couldn't handle med-surg. I know at some point I'll need to start considering getting a bachelor's degree, but honestly I'm starting to wonder if that degree maybe shouldn't be in nursing. Why go deeper into an area where I haven't had success? There are a lot of questions there, sorry for that. Any advice or direction to resources that might help in any way would be appreciated. Thanks.

Nursing questions and nursing exams require a distinct approach that it is in some ways unique to nursing. It's not as straightforward as a lot of other multiple choice type exams. Unfortunately I didn't fully comprehend this until I was studying for my NCLEX. My grades would have been much better if I had. Ask your teachers what resources are available to help you with this. Often they have "retention specialists" or other people there to help tutor you. Inform them that you need help with your approach to the questions, not the material itself. They should be able to guide you. There are resources online for how to approach NCLEX style questions as well. Good luck.

I hadn't thought about that angle of the exam until just now. Will they allow you check blood glucose during the exam? I know for myself I try to ensure that I eat 3 hours before a major exam so that my sugars have "settled" by the time I sit for it. I check before I go in, but all sorts of wacky things can happen during a long exam between the stress and everything else.

I had heard/read before entering nursing school that everyone experiences a time when they want to quit. I couldn't fathom it. Yet, here I sit. I'm starting my last semester, and I just completed my first week at a new facility (my fifth site of my two year program, not counting the "mini rotations"), and it just didn't go well. They want us to chart before we leave the floor. It takes me over an hour to complete charting on the system the school makes us use. My head to toe this week? Dreadful. Nobody noticed, but I knew it was awful. My instructor didn't like my primary nursing diagnosis or my priority setting, and I still can't see where she was coming from on some of it. My patient was challenging, but that's no excuse. I'd never felt like quitting before, but as this semester goes on I know they're going to expect more and more, and I don't feel at all capable of handling it. What do/did you do when you felt like quitting?