RNMeagz

Thanks for the advice everyone! Gonna try to study more and hold my head up high.

I'm new to the ICU and lately I've had a lot of neuro pts with ventrics set to 5 or 10 cm H2O or whatever the order is. Yesterday my charge nurse kind of started quizzing me on what it all means. My pt had her set to 5cm H2O and her ICPs had been about 5 all day. Is there a correlation between where the drainage is set (in terms of cm H2O) and ICP. I feel like he was making it sound as if there was. Also can someone explain the indications for raising/lowering the drain. Thanks so much in advance!

Thanks so much for your quick reply. In our meeting the charge nurse said he's gonna talk to the ICU director and try to get me an extra month of training. But that upper management just sees a big dollar sign on me and wants me on the floor working independently as soon as possible. The goals they thought I should focus on were things like having meds passed and an assessment charted by 9am. A huge problem is my preceptor is buddies with the charge nurses and director and what not because she's actually a really good nurse (just not a good preceptor from my standpoint) so anything bad she has to say about me will stick with the leaders of the unit. I'm just really lost at what the best thing for me to do is. Stick it out or go back to where I am comfortable? I don't know if all this anxiety is worth it, not to mention the huge blows I'm feeling to my overall confidence.

I really need to vent and get some feedback as this is driving me crazy. I have been an ER nurse for 3 years. I realized I was getting bored and decided to move to an ICU position. New hospital, level II trauma center, this ICU gets everything from traumas to neuro to cardiac, etc. I felt like this was the perfect learning opportunity. Well here I am one month in. My preceptor has become annoyed with me. The other day she snapped at me for not knowing the different doctors (some of whom I have never met). I asked her a question about a med rec for a patient who was going to be transferred and she sighed and rolled her eyes in front of my other coworkers and said "we just went over this!" Granted, working in ER I have never had to do a transfer med rec in my life. I confronted her about her annoyance with me and she stated that I'm just not picking things up fast enough and that she is tried of repeating herself all the time. I was shocked because as my preceptor I felt it very appropriate to ask her all the questions I need to understand something. She's made it very clear the whole time that I only get 2 months of training and then "it's sink or swim". I don't know if she mentioned this interaction to our charge nurse (also totally her buddy) because he decided the 3 of us should have a meeting today. He said that on the continuum of experienced nurses who are new to ICU I am falling behind and not catching on quick enough. They had a big problem with my charting not getting done fast enough but I was trying to focus on the pts and do the charting later (it's not like my chatting isn't getting done). The charge RN said that he's just really surprised sometimes with the things I don't know. I asked for an example and the one he gave was checking residuals on a tube feeding. I've never had a pt on tube feelings in the ER! I am just extremely overwhelmed and anxious to the point that my days off are spent worrying myself sick. I know I should take action and study but it's like I'm paralyzed with anxiety. I want to quit and go back to my ER job but then I will probably just feel like a big failure who couldn't suck it up and hang. I want to cry constantly. Any advice? Thanks for hearing me out.