Struggling with some doubt...

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So, I'm struggling with a little bit of doubt.

I don't mean doubt in the sense that I'm questioning my choice of nursing. I absolutely love clinicals and I frequently receive compliments from my clinical instructors and other professors. I love being in nursing school, work my tail off, and wouldn't want to do anything else.

I just have found myself wondering lately...HOW do you make the transition from nursing school to the real world? And am I even capable of achieving such feats in such a short period of time? I watch the nurses in complete awe and wonder if I will ever be capable of doing things the way they do. It's like second nature to them, and it's amazing to me. I know this sounds silly, but I find myself comparing my performance in some of my previous jobs (when I was like 16 and working in restaurants and could never be "good" enough) to my future and it fills me with even more doubt.

My clinicals are on a Med-Surg Tele floor, 32 beds and 6 nurses, which is totally insane to me. It's a very busy floor, patients constantly going to the cath lab, x-ray, dialysis, etc. I think that maybe this doubt is being brought on by the fact that I'm about to start an externship next month and I only have two semesters left before graduation.

Does the feeling of inadequacy and doubt ever go away? Did you struggle with the same feelings? How did you deal with them?

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Like many other fields, school is just the beginning of your learning how to do the job. You'll receive a lot of on the job training, and from what I hear it is not uncommon to feel inadequate/anxious for even the first whole year you work as a nurse. Just commit yourself to constantly learning and doing better and you'll be fine :)

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Specializes in ICU.

School is teaching you how to take the NCLEX, nothing else. They are not training you to be an actual nurse. You will learn that on the job. Schools make their money off of pass rates and they get accreditation by having good pass rates. I acknowledge that I know nothing. By my third semester I resigned myself to the fact that when I start the job of being a nurse, I will learn the job then and not before. Always ask when looking for a job about orientation. That is the important part.

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School is teaching you how to take the NCLEX, nothing else. They are not training you to be an actual nurse. You will learn that on the job. Schools make their money off of pass rates and they get accreditation by having good pass rates. I acknowledge that I know nothing. By my third semester I resigned myself to the fact that when I start the job of being a nurse, I will learn the job then and not before. Always ask when looking for a job about orientation. That is the important part.

Thanks! I think that's a good mindset to have.

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