studying on your days off

[sophie<3]

I am a new grad and starting a job in a Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in a large teaching hospital next week. I was just wondering in general how much you study on your days off as new nurses? Do you feel like you HAVE to study to keep up or does it help you feel ahead? Just trying to get a general idea of what I might expect in my new job! (Also, if you can include what kind of floor you work on that would be great!) Thanks :)

[Dixielee, BSN, RN]

I'm not a new grad, in fact I graduated in 1973! In this competitive job market to gain and keep employment, you must continually study, learn, test, repeat! I suggest all nurses join a nursing organization, i.e Emergency Nurses Asso, etc., take ongoing inservice education classes, work your way up the clinical ladder, return to school, etc. to stay current. While some may stay in one position for many years and some their entire career, I think that is the exception rather than the rule.

While I have been an ED nurse a long time, I have never taken the CEN, but I have it scheduled in 2 weeks, just took an online prep test, recently completed a diabetic resource nurse course and took the NIH stroke scale certification online just because I wanted to. I won't make any more money and these things may or may not make me a better nurse, but it is important to me to stay abreast of new procedures, meds, etc. involved in making me a better person and a better resource for my patients and other staff.

You never know when you may have to polish up the old resume, and you want to keep it is as active and up to date as possible. I don't know if that is what you are looking for, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it :)

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

I gain confidence through research, so yes, I research nearly every day based on where I felt less-than-confident during my shift or things that occur with other nurses.

I once observed my charge getting ready to do a procedure that she'd never done before in her many decades of nursing. She called around the facility to find someone who had done it before, and that person walked her through the procedure on the phone. There was still a question of what supplies we had on the floor and what could get the job done while maintaining sterility. We all threw in suggestions. So, when I got home, I researched the procedure.

That's the part of nursing that they never teach you in school, and you can only get through it by using your resources, whether it be a nurse experienced in a skill or researching on your own.

Also, if a protocol is used on your floor, you can do some research into why the protocol is a best practice. What can happen to a patient if it's not followed? I once observed a near miss event when a nurse decided to drop the q-whatever-hour monitoring that the protocol required because she thought the patient would be ok, based on her experience (and pure laziness). It took some interventions to get the patient back to baseline--interventions that wouldn't have needed to be done if the protocol had been followed. Yep, I researched that one, too.