MassRn91

I recently started a new job at a health clinic and have been there 5 months now. I love what I do, truly. I love my patients and the providers I work with. I have a good rapport with the providers and my colleagues but my charge nurse is not supportive and condescending. As an example, today I had a busy schedule and saw patients back to back and did not have time to even document. At my desk, there's a phone where people are allowed to leave non urgent messages. Around 5, after my last visit, my charge nurse comes up to me in front of everyone and confronts me about having several messages. I informed her I had been seeing patients all day and I haven't had time to sit. She then proceeded to tell me in front of everyone that it shouldn't be taking me that long to do a nurse visit and that I still have responsibilities. I make sure that when I see my patients, that all their questions are answered. I am discouraged and am dreading work tomorrow. There are many more scenarios where I have been belittled. Everywhere has it's politics but does it get better? I dread working.

I have been reading about all these new nurses who are just as afraid as I am to go to work, about making mistakes, and wanting to cry more often than not but the difference is, I don't have a hospital job. I feel all these emotions as a new nurse but instead of working in a hospital, I am a nurse at an assisted living. The way it runs is nothing I have seen before. The morning nurse is there for two hours by themselves for the entire building (roughly 200 residents) and the night nurse is alone for all of the residents for 4 hours. Either shift, I am deathly afraid of anything happening when I am alone. I feel that nursing school did not prepare me enough, I feel inadequate as a nurse because of the little things. Even when I am not alone, I feel discouraged. I feel as if I am always forgetting to do something, overlooking something, or thinking too much into a situation that I am not doing it right. It's making me feel that maybe, just maybe, I am not supposed to be a nurse. I've been on my own for about a month now and I thought maybe I would feel a little bit better about it all but instead, I feel worse every shift. Does anyone else feel that way in a smaller setting? Hmm...