Desperately seeking advice. I am a new RN and started on a Med-Surg floor that is extremely high acuity and bariatric. As new orientees, were promised "hand-holding", shadowing, and "support" from charges and floor nurses to gain the skills necessary to do our jobs. Well, two weeks of shadowing, I was told I am off of orientation and on my own. I am feeling completely overwhelmed. The patients acuity is that of an ICU - I am up to 5 patients on my own. We were told we would be getting the skills to organize our time - it is almost a joke. I never made it to the bathroom, ate, drank one thing my entire shift and feel self-propelled by people needing pain meds, ivs infiltrating, pca pumps alarming, wound vac monitoring, dressing changes, new admits, antibiotics that need to be hung, TPN going up, loading feed bags, pages and pages of meds per patient, bladder scans, bp's bottoming out of going out of control, temps going up.... The acuity level of these patients is too high and two weeks training is not enough. I am walking into rooms needing skills that I don't have and I am supposed to find someone with time to show me a skill. I sought out my charge nurse 4 times yesterday for help and she said that she would get to me, she was really busy but never did so I resorted to finding other nurses. My one patients pump malfunctioned..he was critically ill, had hal, lipids, zosyn, lopresser, ringers, ns, dilaudid all hanging at the same time. I feel completely overwhelmed and not prepared to keep up, let alone do right by my patients and last, but not least, protect my license. I am having nightmares at night and wake up in the morning absolutely dreading going into work. When the alarm goes off, I think it is someone's pump beeping. Please tell me if this is expected because I am new or if I am expecting too much!!!! (I am now 3 weeks in...)
BTW...I am not talking about COPD, CHF or appys like in my clinical experience. Here are some "typical" diagnosis....s/p cholecystectomy drain placement - jejunostomy, entercutaneous fistula takedown w/small bowel resection, lap nephrectomy, s/p r groin squamous cell tumor resection, enterocuaneous fistula - feculant aed, intususeption, retroperitaneal absess, s/p duodenal switch w/gastric leak, s/p anterior rectal colostomy, s/p lap sigmoidectomy, p laminectomy syndrome, s/p hemicolectomy...to name a few.
