States in the house!

The DON and the supervisors actually made it much worse than what it was. Lol, pretty funny too, I seen employees I had never seen before, unit managers stayed late, nurses who generally have administrative duties were trying to work the floor and talk to the residents.

It wasn't bad, the surveyor followed me with two of my residents, a crush meds and a dementia....she checked the charts and my nursing notes, she was easygoing and really just stood back and watched.

As I said, management can make it worse.

I just survived my first state survey as an RN a few months ago. It actually went pretty well. The woman who watched me was very nice and told the DON that I was "a great new nurse" after it was over. Just do everything the way you were taught and you'll be fine. I was sure to verbalize things that might not be obvious when she was watching me do my med pass (e.g. "Now I'm looking at the expiration date and it's not expired" "Her BG was 260 and you can see here on the SS orders that she gets 4 units of regular for that" etc.) Also remember, you don't need to know the answer to everything they ask you, you just have to know how to find the answer. So if they ask you something you don't know, say "I will find out and get back to you" and then look it up, ask another nurse, the DON, etc.

Good luck, it will be over soon!

I recently went through my second state survey as a new nurse. Last year they didn't follow me for med pass. This year they asked to follow someone and I offered. I don't think there's anything to be scared of as long as you do everything the way you were taught. I hung an IV antibiotic and the surveyor told me "thanks, that's all I need to see." after that. Wasn't so bad.

Also, I wanted to add:

She didn't follow me around for my entire med pass. She just said she needed to see me do an injection, an eye drop, and an inhaler and to just let her know when I was ready to do any of the above. She did watch me do some oral meds because I was giving them at the same time as the other stuff, but she didn't need to see me do those.