Tips for nurses in their first year of nursing

Nurses New Nurse

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Please share any tips you might have for our new nurses. Hopefully, this will become a great resource of nursing tips from all of our experienced nurses from around the globe.

Be yourself always...No pretensions at all.That's so true always ask?ask?ask? and don't pretend that you already knew everything.Nursing is a continuous process of learning...

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Specializes in ED/trauma.
Hello all,

I am a new graduate RN and I am so confused. I know that I should get some experience with med/sur first, but I am really interested in post partum. I am 36years old and I don't want to waste my time. I just want to select one area and advance from there. In addition too, I have several other interest to include: diabetes educator and psychiatry. Please help!!!

Erica

I was in the same boat. I really want to start in L&D and eventually go on to advanced practice in women's health (CNM & APN). I struggled with this for a while, though. I have so many interests, and I started to worry, "What if I change my mind and want to do something else? Or, worse yet, what if I don't like it as much as I think I will??"

I talked to an instructor who has become a mentor to me. She told me her story... that she started in med/surg and ended up going to float pool. Having the broad M/S background allowed her to float anywhere and pick up new tasks/issues with relative ease. So... that cinched the deal for me.

Currently, I'm a new gran RN in med/tele. While I find the work itself to be emotionally and physically tiring, I know that it's not where I want to spend my life. I do want to spend at least 1 year there because it's important for me to become familiar with the presentation of medical disorders (versus what my textbooks said...). Additionally, all the procedures are such great experience: from starting IVs, to changing dressings, to hanging blood, to starting foleys... It's such a broad array of skills and encounters that I know it will prepare me well.

I know I will always be longing for more while working in M/S, but I'm confident it was a great place to start. :nurse:

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So helpful, Thank you!

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I just graduated nursing (ADN) in December 2007. I had my first job at a local hospital and was fired within a month. They said they did not have 6 months to train me and thought I moved too slow for their unit. Anyone else ever has this problem? I am looking for other options at the moment but where I am there are not a lot of opportunities for nurses right out of school. Thanks for the tips, wish I read them sooner.

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Great tips. Thank you everyone.

I'm starting my nursing dip in a month.. Looking forward to it..

I just want to get it all over and done with and become a nurse.. a good nurse that is..

Thanks once again..

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Specializes in ICU, Telemetry, neuro,research.

The best advice I can give a new nurse is the same thing I would tell my preceptee. Remember, you are but one woman/man and you have only two hands. Stop, take a deep breath and think:icon_roll Who needs you most. Then go forward and be the kind of nurse that you wanted to be when you started your journey. Prioritize and breathe. The rest will come. If you do not practice this, you will burn out and nursing cannot afford to lose anymore good people who are in this for the right reason.

The problem with the expression, "Nurses eat their young," is that they do that and treat new nurses so poorly because they have become sour and have forgotten what drew them to nursing in the first place.

If the time comes that you cannot remember the feeling of the first patient that said "Thank you nurse," and meant it, or you cannot remember that feeling that made tears come to your eyes and made it hard to breathe when you found out you passed the boards, or the first time someone addressed you as NURSE, then you need to get out before you become bitter because that bitterness will touch every other part of your life and everyone in it.

But, before you run screaming out of the unit...think, maybe you can do something else within nursing so you can refuel? Don't give up on us and we will not give up on you. Nursing, the toughest job you will ever love.

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Specializes in Long term care, and pediatrics.

These responses are awesome!:redbeathe:redbeathe:redbeathe

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Specializes in Long term care, and pediatrics.

Always take your time in anything that you do, because if you dont you are bound to make a lot of mistakes. One RN once told me, "You have all day to drive home, you dont have all day to get in an accident. Please apply this to your thoughts.

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Specializes in Cardiology.

The best advice I was given as a newly qualified nurse was to reflect on practice - using the guidelines set out in 'The Gibbs Reflective Cycle'. Breaking down experiences into 'what happened', 'what were you thinking and feeling' and 'what would you do differently next time' enables the nurse to turn even the worst experiences into something positive.

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Hi Barb 123,

I'm a freshman nursing student with 7 weeks to go before I'm done with my first year (I'm in an ADN program). I've just begun my third clinical rotation, and it is a Med Surg rotation. My previous 7 weeks was spent on L&D/Mat/Pedi. Yes, they packed all of that into 7 weeks.

The Director of our N. program was our clinical supervisor. All of us in our group were excited at first, because we had the Dir of our program as our C instructor. We thought we were going to learn a lot. Boy, oh boy, did that turn out not to be the case! She had "standards", which was fine, but instead of leading us along and guiding us in coming up to her standards, she made us feel stupid, was openly frustrated with us most of the time, was unapproachable - because we'd just get belittled. She had me on "shun and ignore" for the majority of the time. I went home from clinical shaking, with headaches in both the occipital and frontal regions, and heart palpitations. She also was a "Care Plan Nazi", expecting 25-30 pages due in a day. Most of my care plans were late. At my eval I handed 3 more. I made a god effort to get the majority of my work in, but it was just too much! If I had been already an RN working in the field, and had her for a supervisor I would have called in sick to look for a different job.

Fast forward 7 weeks and our rotation changed. Hallelulah! My present clinical instructor hangs in the background to see what we do with our patient. She's approachable, allows us to make mistakes (up to a point), but then stops us and says, "Stop and reassess the situation. I think you're missing something. Take a look again and tell me what it is you need to do/see - and then she waits. And when we see it, she says, "Good". And we carry on. She doesn't expect us to be "perfect", but she does expect us to learn.

The point of my long discourse is to please, select your preceptors very, very carefully. Look for qualities that are going to advance learning, not hinder it. Tomorrows quality nurses don't just "happen", or "evolve from "somewhere". They are molded and shaped by those who've gone before us. Two days of clinical with my new C. instructor, my confidence level is back up, and I feel ready, and prepared emotionally, to try new things-when before I was seriously contemplating looking for a new program to switch off into. I'm no slacker either. I earned a B in the first semester, and have a 90 average after two tests (where the class average was 76-80), and am an NSNA officer. I tried very hard not to take what happened in my previous clinical personally, but yes I did feel severely emotionally, and psychologically abused. Don't select preceptors who make students feel this way. Thanks for listening. Carry on.

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Hi...I am in nursing school and was just wondering if anyone has any tricks on how to palpate a pedal pulse. I have tried and tried but for the life of me this one really gets me. Anything would be helpful. Thanks and Happy Easter!:plsebeg:

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.
Hi...I am in nursing school and was just wondering if anyone has any tricks on how to palpate a pedal pulse. I have tried and tried but for the life of me this one really gets me. Anything would be helpful. Thanks and Happy Easter!:plsebeg:

The easiest way to find the pedal pulse is to start at the notch at the ankle... you know, where the two tendons are only a finger-width apart. Check it out on your own foot. You should be able to feel a pulse there. Then move your fingers (three of them, not two) along the medial tendon that runs down to the great toe. About the time that your leading finger reaches the halfway point from ankle to toe you should feel a pulse with your middle finger. Try it on yourself and see if it works.

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