ArtemisRN

I am currently looking for a job as a new graduate, and one of the areas I am interested in is psych. I've had a strong interest in this for a few reasons: 1) I previously worked in the office of an assisted living facility for the disabled. The majority of our residents were mentally ill, many of them had schizophrenia. I was told that I interact with mentally ill residents well. Many residents who were paranoid trusted me and would come to me with concerns. Even when residents got out of hand (oh and trust me they did) I learned to take it with a grain of salt and move on. 2) In clinical, whenever a patient had a decreased LOC and was resisting treatment, my fellow nursing students asked me to help. I seemed to be a natural with calming people down. I developed a reputation for it. I'm not perfect at it, but I think a lot of it has to do with demeanor and experience. 3) My personal history with mental illness. At 16 I overcame crippling obsessive compulsive disorder. I did this on my own, through what I now know is considered behavioral and exposure therapy. I had tried medications, which failed miserably. I had dropped out of school and basically lived as a recluse. I finally got fed up and decided if I was ever going to beat this I had to face my fears and stop the compulsive acts. I have been completely OCD free for years. I can't imagine living like that ever again. I think being through that has taught me so much about mental illness. This experience, more than anything, motivates me to help others. 4) My much younger sister has severe autism and epilepsy. I believe that caring for her, learning to find ways to connect to her, has given me a skill that I use with patients who experience psychosis. I think it takes a special person to be able to treat a mentally ill individual without judgement. I know for some, it's difficult to see behavior as a symptom of an illness. It is also easy to enable, avoid setting limits, ignore bad behavior, and lower expectations for the mentally ill. I think the ability to address negative behavior while retaining rapport is tricky, but I love rising to that challenge. I am wondering these things would be appropriate to talk about in the interview process. I am sure one of the questions will be, "Why psych nursing?" I have been mentally healthy for over 10 years and I don't see myself ever falling back into that pattern again. I am not ashamed of my past history with this illness. However, do you think that talking about this during an interview will hurt my chances of getting a job? I could understand how someone might view a past history of mental illness as a liability, especially when it comes to nursing.

She didn't fly off the handle- she handled it well. What else could she have done? She went online to vent, a perfectly appropriate thing to do. However, I hate to tell you that nursing school (especially at a community college) is pretty frustrating. You are going to have great moments, and you are going to have horrible ones. You are going to have nurses and instructors treat you like gold and be supportive, and some are going to treat you like dirt and take out their frustrations on you. It sounds like the staff at the bookstore are unprofessional and hate their jobs. I would write a complaint to the college, explaining what happened very factually, and just put it behind you. What I will tell you is even with the frustrations, if nursing is really what you want to do, it's so worth it. Good luck!

I just passed the NCLEX on Thursday. The day before I used the Evolve/Elsevier HESI NCLEX prep online questions. I was getting 50-60% on them! I was sure I was going to fail. If I got a question wrong, I would just look up information about that particular illness/disorder. I spent hours studying and really was losing confidence. I passed in 100 questions! The test seemed unreasonably hard about half way through, with some disorders and meds I had never even heard about. I seriously couldn't even break them down to the terminology and figure it out. I had to guess, and I still passed. Keep in mind the NCLEX is a test that is set up to get harder if you are doing well. If you are getting harder questions, it's a good sign! Don't worry, if you are getting 60-80 percent I bet you will do even better than me!

Someone told me to ask if I could resign instead of being fired, considering I wasn't guilty of any misconduct. I'm considering it. She said it would look better on my resume. I think it would be better if I didn't even mention it. On the bright side, I have an interview on the 21st of October for a PRN position in trauma. I've actually had this since earlier this month. I have no idea why the interview is so far out, but I guess I will give it my all. It's a start. It sounds exciting. I'll be honest, tell them I don't have a lot of clinical experience but am eager to learn. It would be hilarious, but not surprising to me, if I fail at a disorganized outpatient urgent care but succeed at inpatient trauma. I guess we will see.

I was offered a job at a busy outpatient urgent care clinic before I graduated. I will try my best to make a long story short. I was trained by over 6 different preceptors for the first few weeks. Each time I was switched to a new person, it wasn't because I wasn't learning or had an issue with another nurse; it was because the other nurses "didn't have the time to train me" (this was their explanation, not mine). I guess this wouldn't be a problem except that each time I was switched the new preceptor wouldn't let me do anything without "watching" her first. I barely had any hands on experience at all. This was very frustrating and boring, but I tried to watch and learn. After almost a month of this, I finally got up the courage and spoke to my supervisor about this. I told her I felt that I wasn't getting appropriate training and I needed to be assigned one preceptor and actually given the opportunity to use my hands. She agreed, and finally assigned me an actual preceptor. A week later, I was told on Monday that I was doing great. My supervisor and preceptor gave me some feedback about time management, but most of the feedback was positive. They literally said I was making great progress. I felt great, I thanked them for being so supportive, and continued to work the evening shift. Then I ended up interacting with a very unprofessional, rude doctor. He belittled me all night, he would mumble orders and expect me to enter them in the computer for him. When I would ask him to repeat himself so I made sure I entered the right thing, he would get angry. The final straw came when he picked up a chart for a 15 year old patient and started talking to the parents of a baby about her medical history. I had no idea any of this was happening, until he swung open the door to the room, and shouted at me "What are you doing? What patient's room am I in? You gave me the wrong chart!" I calmly walked up to him and pointed to the room number on the chart "That says room number 9" He replied "Well I'm in room number nine!" I pointed to the door. It was room 10. He was livid. His face was so red... We work in a clinic, the charts are left in an open area for the doctors to come to, first come, first serve. I don't hand anyone charts, and I didn't make any errors. The next day I walk in and I am told that I am being terminated because it's taking too long to train me. My supervisor, whose voice was shaking and looked on the verge of tears told me that the doctors at the office decided I wasn't learning fast enough and they had to let me go. I don't feel like this was fair at all. I was never given a chance to prove myself. I was never told that I wasn't performing to standards. The doctor I had the altercation with, I now know, is the co-owner of the practice. I guess I should have kissed his butt a little more and not corrected him in front of a patient. You live, you learn. Now I am wondering if I will ever get another job. My contract said that I had 90 days to be in training. I wasn't unprofessional. I never had issues in clinical at school and I had three clinical professors offer to write me letters of recommendation. I know that I should have spoken up earlier about the lack of hands on training but I really didn't want to upset anyone. I never, ever put a patient at risk and I never did anything that would be considered negligence. When I did start to do hands-on activities I was told I was performing well. The only thing I was asked to improve was prioritizing, which was I admit is a weakness. But I feel like their expectations were a little absurd for a new graduate. Did anyone else go through this? Any advice? Should I list this on my resume?