Those at the 1-2 year mark of nursing

[MJB2010]

How long did it take before you felt like you were doing ok? The stress is killing me.

How long before I stop dreading my shifts?

How long before I stop being so afraid and nervous and start to feel competent?

How long before the mean old nurses stop treating you like your not in the club?

I feel stuck where I am the new grad market here is not good. I want to quit but I know I cant.

[BartC_RN]

I'm a year and a half graduated and one year this week into my first job and I'm just now starting to feel kind of okay. I have great coworkers on my unit....I'm lucky. I trust probably over 90 percent of them. It seems like, for the most part, we're all the same age and the ones that are older and been doing it longer are the ones that honestly love the job and like teaching the rest of us. Again, I feel fortunate for this. Usually, the only ones that treat you like you're "not in the club" are the ones from other areas that don't know you.

I've dreaded getting up in the morning the 4th or 5th day in a row, but once I get moving, doing assessments, etc that goes away. I have honestly yet to dread the work which reinforces my decision to this.

Do I feel competent? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I still ask lots of questions and get aggravated with myself when I miss things that I ought to know. We're so busy I can't think straight sometimes and that bothers me. We've recently started doing something on our unit that makes me feel more like a hospital secretary buried in paper work than an RN. I believe it's something that compromises safety but what do I know, I haven't been around that long.

When do I really feel incompetent? During codes when the ICU nurses come over.

But overall my life as a nurse is better than it was a year ago.

[gettingbsn2msn, MSN, RN]

I am 2 years in but the first year I worked alot of overtime and it really helped me. I worked alot of different shifts and with many differing personalities. I did ok and felt I survived. I have a good bedside manner so that is my saving grace. I always feel like I am behind and want to throw up when a new admission arrives to the floor. I am grossly underpaid for this job. I have not had a raise since I began and will probably never see one at this facility since we are going on 3 years of a freeze. I make 18/hour, 19.50 for weekend diffs. I am getting my MSN to have more opportunities at other facilities but then I will owe more $$ for education.

[gettingbsn2msn, MSN, RN]

And one more thing, I do not make anywhere near the average for a RN. Last year I made 48,000 and that was with tons of overtime. I cannot do it this year as I started my MSN in the spring. Nurses here are poor and I find that sad. My brother works for the state and he makes tons more than I do with no additional degrees (but then again, he may get laid off!)

[nminodob]

I am also at the 1.5 yr mark. There are still moments of panic and dread, but these are mixed with moments of pride. For example, I just had to re-cert for CPR, and while we were practicing compressions on a dummy the thought popped into my head, "I have done compressions during a code! On a real live person!" Realizing that made me feel so much more at ease while practicing on a dummy, that's for sure.

Then there was a time the oncoming shift needed an ABG on a pt with an A-line, and I was the only available nurse in our stepdown unit who knew how to get it (or else the only one brave enough to attempt it with a crowd of residents and family looking on.) We only occasionally see A-lines on our unit. I got the ABG, zeroed the transducer again, and handed it off to the primary nurse. Whew! And no blood spraying anyone in the face!!

Then there was the time I was floated to a med-surg floor with lower acuity, and I was given their most difficult patient - a trach, C-collar, jaws wired, who had been vomiting while being supine down in the MRI suite. This was a near disaster for all involved, but I was able to handle it OK and the patient recovered fine with a little O2 and suctioning. The other nurses on the lower acuity unit I had been floated to looked at me with a little more respect than I had been accustomed to, and one of them remarked that it was lucky for the patient that I had come from the ICU stepdown unit to their floor that night!

And probably one of the most satisfying aspects of having a little experience under my belt is being able to conference with the residents about our difficult patients, and kind of "getting it" when the lab results show rhabdo, or a troponin leak, or central diabetes insipidus.

None of this is meant to be "blowing my own horn" - well, maybe just a little! But these are all things that experienced nurses know, and take for granted to same degree - and these are the things newbies generally don't know, and why experienced nurses (who have forgotten what it means to be inexperienced) may roll their eyes a bit at the inevitable questions a newbie will ask.

Someone once said that half the game is just "showing up" - putting in your time. This doesn't mean that the adrenalin stops flowing when you think about your upcoming shift, or that knot in your stomach completely disappears. It just means you kept yourself in the game, even when it looked like you were losing. Because you are not losing, you are becoming a REAL NURSE!

[LouisVRN, RN]

I am now at 2 years and 2 months. I can honestly say I really enjoy it, most of the time. Sometimes I think I'm going crazy but I look forward to going to work. I work on a very busy med-surg/ortho unit. As soon as I accepted I'm never going to know everything there will always be things are totally out of the ordinary and out of my comfort zone I was okay. I think I probably felt competent after 4-6 months. Now I am told that I am a resource for my unit. I am hoping to be charge if a position opens up. Have you ever considered that maybe the area you're working in just may not be for you? I oriented a friend once who just did not like having 5 patients in med-surg, time management was always a problem but they left for stepdown and are now enjoying work and flourishing.

[LaceyRN]

I may be in the minority but it took about 6 months for me to be comfortable in my job, 1 year to be confident, and 1.5 years to be bored. I rarely feel like I am learning anything new and I yearn to be excited and challenged again with my job. I think the transition into becoming comfortable happens at different times for everyone. The only way to work through it is to go through it. :)