Altra1992

I work in a city centre ED so a lot of our clientele suffer from drug and alcohol addiction. You can imagine that verbal and occasional physical assault is part of that territory. However for the most part I find negative experiences from patients towards staff generally have a reason (pain, long waits, no sleep, noisy packed environment, feeling their needs are not met due to us being short staffed, psych issues and substance abuse) you learn to deal with these encounters in a polite and positive way and you will feel better off for it. you're too new in the game to feel so negative, let yourself be open minded, be positive, smile even when you're not feeling it, be enthusiastic and keep your head down while concentrating on your studies. Trust me that will carry you through to being a qualified nurse with a much better view of a fantastic profession. As for my relationship with nursing and medical colleagues I find you get what you give. I love my nursing colleagues and we keep each other going. You will make life long friends over the course of your nursing career and some of them will be doctors. When you are a qualified nurse you will then be in a position to not accept grief from an occasional doctor who may climb up on their high horse. Until then, heed my above advice and enjoy being a student with it all ahead of you. Just realised how how long this post is, sorry.

I work in a city centre ED so a lot of our clientele suffer from drug and alcohol addiction. You can imagine that verbal and occasional physical assault is part of that territory. However for the most part I find negative experiences from patients towards staff generally have a reason (pain, long waits, no sleep, noisy packed environment, feeling their needs are not met due to us being short staffed, psych issues and substance abuse) you learn to deal with these encounters in a polite and positive way and you will feel better off for it. you're too new in the game to feel so negative, let yourself be open minded, be positive, smile even when you're not feeling it, be enthusiastic and keep your head down while concentrating on your studies. Trust me that will carry you through to being a qualified nurse with a much better view of a fantastic profession. As for my relationship with nursing and medical colleagues I find you get what you give. I love my nursing colleagues and we keep each other going. You will make life long friends over the course of your nursing career and some of them will be doctors. When you are a qualified nurse you will then be in a position to not accept grief from an occasional doctor who may climb up on their high horse. Until then, heed my above advice and enjoy being a student with it all ahead of you. Just realised how how long this post is, sorry.

That's a helpful tip, thanks. I'm working in Cork, Ireland.

This is my first post yay! :) I am an irish nurse just finished my 9 month internship after 4 long years to get my nursing degree. I have secured a job in the ED of my parent hospital. Usually we have to have 6 months as an RN at ward level before being able to transfer to ED but due to short staffing some new grads are going straight there! ED is where I wanted to end up so im excited but also nervous! .....any advice??