allisonrh

I had someone take a special interest in me at my initial CPR training class too. I am small boned, so I think she was worried I couldn't do it hard enough. Whatever, on my first day of nurse residency orientation we had to practice codes on dummies and the RN watching me said, "Wow, it's always the little ones that turn out to give really strong compressions!" It must be overcompensation :)

This happened to me recently. I came into work and realized at 7:45 that I had not gotten report on my final patient. I figured the RN had been held up giving a lengthy report somewhere else, but he had forgotten me and gone home. I didn't care at all and was not mad at him when he called me that afternoon to apologize profusely. I read the notes, glanced over the vitals, and assessed him. It was really fine. To be fair, the patient was perfectly stable, so of course that makes a difference :)

Hey... same thing happened to me. I started in the CVICU, and after 5 months of orientation hell, they decided I needed experience in the CVIMC and advised me to return to the ICU in one year. I will probably not do that, because even though I learned a lot of great things in the ICU during that short period of time, I feel like I need 5 years in the IMC before I could return to that kind of acuity. I was a new grad learning balloon pumps, ecmo, vads, etc. It was exciting at the time, but in retrospect, too stressful to tackle all that when I was still learning the basics such as how to talk to doctors, how to navigate the hospital bureaucracy in order to help the patient get what they need. I also dealt with my fair share of nursing buttheads, and I felt horrible and bitter after I was let go. Definitely let it all out to someone who understands. Of course you are upset! It really does take a great preceptor to help a new nurse to be successful. Even the nicest ones can take themselves so over the top seriously that they forget how to be relatable and that orientees are simply human. There might be another nurse on the floor you go to who will relate to your experience. Fortunately the IMC nurses welcomed me, as this situation happens quite frequently at my hospital. It's great to become a master in confidence as a bedside nurse, and you will get so great at it that eventually you won't care so much about other people's personality issues. Someday you can tackle another specialty if you want, and your experience won't hurt you. By the way, I have a friend who was dismissed from the ICU as a new grad on her third shift. She was so upset obviously. She was hired on the stepdown and spent a year there honing in her skills. There are a lot of politics where I work, and she couldn't get back into any of the other ICU's even with excellent references from colleagues. I advised her to move to a local shock trauma hospital where she recently began as a multi-trauma SICU nurse. I couldn't be more proud of her. If you want it, you will get it. Give yourself time and bounce back.