alwayslearning55

Thank you everyone for all of the responses and encouragement. I'm going to hang in there for now and see if it gets better. I want to at least make it to 1 year. Although I feel like quitting every shift, I'm hoping that the more experience I get, the easier it will be to handle everything. I've been working 4 shifts a week d/t having to pay back a huge amount of student loans, but I'm going to go down to 3 days to keep my sanity and see if that helps me. Thank you for showing such great support and really making me feel like I'm not alone.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read my post and respond. You've all really made me feel so much better and really encouraged me to keep moving forward and keep learning through everything. It's so nice to have so much support from nurses who have been in my shoes and understand what I'm going through. P.S. I changed my username, you are all right I can't beat myself up.

I can't thank you enough for this post. The step by step on how to go about the transfusion with tips and what to do the whole time and if a reaction occurs is SO helpful for me. I want to print this and have it with me at work lol. Unfortunately, we have one charge nurse who is not helpful and she is the one that was working that day. The other are usually helpful and assist in transfers, meds, etc. if we are behind. But this one does not, she think it's tough love. And I wish so much that we had transporters. You're right, I try to do a lot on my own because everyone is always so busy and I don't want to bother them, but I need to learn to get help sooner rather than later. And i need to learn to say No and stand up for myself. I'm already starting to see how people take advantage of me because I'm too nice and not assertive enough.

Thank you so much for all of the information and for taking the time to respond to my post. Now I understand why there's a time limit on blood transfusions. Also, I was so worried about the incident report because I thought this was like a write up for me. I feel like I can finally breathe now.

Thank you so much for your reply. He was supposed to get the whole unit but it was supposed to have been over 3 hours. He didn't have a GI bleed or anything. His Hgb was 7.2. But when the nurse called me and told me I made a huge mistake and that she was going to get in trouble because of me, I just figured this was the biggest mistake I could have ever made, especially because it had to do with blood. The patient was transferred to a floor where he could get chemo. If we don't transfer our patients promptly the house supervisor usually comes down and gets angry with us because we're holding up 2 rooms and our hospital is so full that we have people in the hallways of the ER. I agree I will need to be more assertive. It's just a little difficult for me sometimes because I have a very straight forward, blunt charge nurse who is much much older than me and I don't want to seem disrespectful in any way. As for the cleaning up, our CNA's have 16 patients and so it's very difficult to get ahold of someone to help because they're usually running around just like I am. I do wish we had some more help. Thank you so much for responding. I'm going to practice being assertive and I'll really try to hang in there and just learn from everything and not let it bring me down.

Thank you for being kind. I'm always very hard on myself, but this time it was for good reason. I will learn from it and move on. I agree that the other nurse was guilty as well, but as a new grad I don't like to start trouble with veteran nurses. I will definitely never make this mistake again and will triple check everything before doing blood ever again. I did actually speak with a mentor nurse on the unit who really calmed me down, but I just can't help but feel like an absolute failure. I hope this feeling passes.

Thank you for replying. I think you're right, I did run it too slow and I was paying more attention to the IV beeping than the time. I was taught to run blood at 50 cc/hr initially, and I think I kept it at that the entire time. 4 hours is, in fact, the maximum for our hospital. I agree, I will pay more attention next time I transfer a patient, or anytime I run any blood. I will never make this mistake again.

I'm really having a lot of trouble with this. I'm a new grad RN who has been on my own for about 2 months. I had a 6 week preceptorship. I'm working days on a very busy med-tele floor where we have 6-7 patients. Sometimes our CNA's have 16 rooms each, and when we have 6-7 patients and the CNA is swamped the whole time, it's SOO hard to get things done. On top of that, our hospital never closes it's doors. Our ER is so busy all the time that we have patients in the hallways waiting to be assigned rooms. Our hospital doesn't assign rooms based on acuity. When there's an open room, it's booked before it's done being cleaned, and it doesn't matter if you just had 3 discharges in a row, you're getting 3 admits in a row. Also, it doesn't matter if you already have 3 total care patients, a 4th one will be assigned. It's so hard for me to learn in this type of environment. I never even really know what's going on with my patients, and I have no time to think about what anything means. As a new grad, I want to learn, and I feel like I don't have time to learn because I have so many tasks to do. On our floor, patients are given dilaudid like it's candy. You can have 7 patients with 4 of them getting dilaudid q3h prn, and believe me, they call NONSTOP right at 3 hours. On top of that, a lot of them have breakthrough roxicodone in between the dilaudid. All I do is pass medications the entire day. I barely have time to chart, and I have NEVER had a chance to read doctors notes. I've come to the realization that I absolutely HATE nursing. I don't enjoy any of this any more. During nursing school, I never felt this way. I had wonderful experiences and really connected with my patients. But now I just can't take this anymore. I don't want to be a nurse at all. My patients annoy me so much. Although I never let it show, I just wish they would LEAVE ME ALONE with their requests every 10 minutes. And on top of the patients everyone expects so much from the nurse, we are the maids, social workers, therapists, middle men for communication between doctors, janitors, professional narcotic dealers. I just can't take this anymore. I dread going into work every single day. I used to be so cheerful and smiley and now I just feel like a zombie. I cry at the thought of having to work and I count down my days until my days off. I'm only 22 and just started my career, I don't want to feel this way. I can't imagine being a nurse longer than 6 months to a year. I spend hours after work charting, and there are many experienced nurses who stay late to chart as well. What should I do? Unfortunately, I signed a 2 year contract d/t no new grad jobs being available. I want to go back to school and never look back at nursing again. Except, I can't. I wish it would get better.

I feel like the biggest failure. I'm a new grad RN who has been on my own for about 2 months now. I had a 6 week orientation prior to being on my own. I'm on an incredibly busy med-tele floor. And today I made my first error--a HUGE error at that. My patient was to receive a blood transfusion. He was a very sick patient who had 4 channels running with antibiotics, fluids, electrolytes, and blood. I accidentally let the blood transfusion run too long. I can't believe I let this happen. When I looked at the order I thought it was for 4 hours. However, the order was actually for 3 HOURS. And then, around 6:30 right before shift change I was told I had to transfer the patient to a different floor and my charge nurse was very adamant that it needed to be done ASAP. Around that same time I was trying to pass medications and another nurse called to ask if I can switch shifts with her and when I told her it wasn't a good time she got the charge nurse on the phone who kept trying to talk to me about scheduling and me switching shifts with the other nurse. I told her I hadn't even had a chance to sit down all day and chart, let alone look at what my schedule is, and that I would let her know later, but she just kept trying to fix up my schedule. At the same time I had a discharge who had been waiting all day to leave, a patient who needed to be cleaned up, meds to pass, and had to transfer this patient upstairs. I called report and transferred the patient and never turned off the blood. I didn't even know what I had done until the nurse from the other floor called me an hour later and said I had made a huge mistake. Not only was I supposed to have turned off the blood at 6:30, it had run up to 7:50. It ran for 4 HOURS AND 20 MINUTES. I notified my charge nurse right away and called the doctor, and we had to write an incident report. I can't believe I made such a big mistake. I'm crying and so angry at myself for missing something so big. We are so busy on our floor with so many things going on at once, it feels like I'm being pulled in so many directions and I can't keep track of everything. However, there is no excuse. This was MY fault and no one else's. I should have been paying more attention, I shouldn't have let this happen. I don't know what to do. I don't wanna go back to work, I don't want to show my face again.