To the Experienced Nurse

annaRNC · Mar 1, 2010

I'd hasten to say that responses like yours support the idea that some (by no means all) of the experienced nurses don't remember.

RN1298 · Mar 1, 2010

Thanks for sharing Katie!! It's so good to be able to read the different perspectives of nurses with all levels of experience and all kinds of backgrounds on allnurses. I'm so sorry you're frustrated, but I'm glad you're able to vent through your poetry. I hope this is a good week at work for you! :)

Lucky0220 · Mar 1, 2010

Two Perfect Post!!

If Katie5's post and KinshuKiba's post were each posted on every unit for preceptors and preceptees to see, the world would be a beautiful place!!!

I am printing each one out and posting them in our breakroom.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Mar 1, 2010

i saw the stuff in parentheses. too bad it doesn't show up well in the final rendering. even so, though you may be trying to appear lighthearted your post still comes off as whiny and self-indulgent. especially your final sentence (before the parenthetical stuff): "the difference between us? i will remember how it was being a novice." poor you.

i'm thinking pretty much all of us remember what it's like to be a novice. the novices, however, have no idea what it's like to be an experienced nurse. i hope the op keeps her whiney post and reads back over it in 5 or 10 years. i'm guessing she'll be a bit embarrassed!

nursemike, ASN, RN · Mar 2, 2010

i'm thinking pretty much all of us remember what it's like to be a novice. the novices, however, have no idea what it's like to be an experienced nurse. i hope the op keeps her whiney post and reads back over it in 5 or 10 years. i'm guessing she'll be a bit embarrassed!

i have a pretty clear memory of what it was like to be a novice. it was brutal. i'm kind of an old-fashioned guy, in some ways, so when i talk about wanting to hide in the med room and cry (didn't actually do it, but wanted to) i'm saying a lot. the thing is, i was working with a strong team of nurses, and there was not one nurse on my unit who wanted to see me fail. probably a few who didn't care too much, either way, but most we're pulling for me and actively supporting me and looking out for me as best they could. which is horrible, because it leads me to the inescapable conclusion that most of the reason i was having a hard time was me! i didn't know everything i needed to know. i couldn't manage my time very effectively. starting one iv could throw my whole shift out of kilter. some of the aides tested me, to see how much of their jobs they could get me to do. some of my peers tried to give me advice, but they were speaking martian. a lot of my patients were needy. some wanted pain meds, some wanted water, some wanted someone to listen, some wanted to breathe. and through it all, i had no one to blame for my inadequacy but myself! aaaargh!!!

so, now, after all my many months of experience, i've seen some newbies come after me, and some more newbies after them, and most of them suffer just like i did, and most get through it just like i did, and when i try to give them advice, they look at me like i was speaking martian, and when things go badly, they want to hide in the med room and cry, and mostly don't, even though they want to. and then, eventually, they start to get it, and i couldn't feel more proud of them if i actually had something to do with it.

the thing is, i've seen a lot of my less experienced peers have moments when they would really have liked to have blamed someone else for their troubles, and i know exactly how they felt. i was screwed, in that regard, because i had already worked on my unit before nursing school, so i already knew the people i was working with. plus, i was a new nurse, but not a new person, so even though it was my first time at this rodeo, it wasn't my first time at any rodeo, and i'd learned some things about life before i ever thought about being a nurse. but it wasn't hard to see newer nurses really want to hang their troubles on someone else, but since they were in real life and not posting anonymously on a website, they had to censor themselves and try hard not to say things they would later regret. and i watched most of them come to some of the same conclusions i had to: i feel inadequate because i am inadequate. i'm gonna have to forget about trying to be supernurse and focus on becoming adequate. i'll take any help i can get, but no one can do this for me. some of these crazy old hags (many half my age) actually seem to be having fun--maybe if i hang in there, it'll be fun for me someday.

and i think maybe the op, and a lot of other newer nurses struggling to make it, are going through a similar process, although i'm sure some are more fortunate than i was in that maybe some of their problems really are someone else's fault. but even then, probably not all their problems. so, it's probably okay to come here and blow off some steam to people you won't have to face at work tomorrow.

but i have to add this caution, because i have seen a few who truly believed all their problems were someone else's fault, who weren't just blowing off a little steam, and a couple of them didn't make it, but the ones who did are the 2nd and 3rd and 4th year nurses who like to dump all over the first year nurses and run to management to tell them a 20 or 30 year nurse who's saved more lives than she can count gave less than stellar report or dotted some t's and crossed some i's in her charting after running her butt off for 14 hours. my experience--and i'll admit, it's limited--has been that the nurses with decades of experience no longer have the energy to eat their young, and are happy if they can just get to eat their lunch.

i recently changed my "negativity sucks." sig line. i'm not entirely sure everyone appreciated the irony. i would love to say that nursing is no place for whiners and crybabies, but we are all human, and therefore all whiners and crybabies, and sometimes if it weren't for whining and crying, we'd have nothing to talk about--and that's as true for all us old hands (ahem, cough, er, um, well, anyway...) as for the newbies. whining and crying can actually be an important part of the nurses' bonding process, as long as we're care how much of it we let ourselves believe. sooner or later, though, we've all gotta put on our big boy boxers, or whatever, and get to work.

Katie5 · Mar 2, 2010

i'm thinking pretty much all of us remember what it's like to be a novice. the novices, however, have no idea what it's like to be an experienced nurse. i hope the op keeps her whiney post and reads back over it in 5 or 10 years. i'm guessing she'll be a bit embarrassed!

rubyveee you of all people should know better.

sharpeimom · Mar 2, 2010

i'm thinking pretty much all of us remember what it's like to be a novice. the novices, however, have no idea what it's like to be an experienced nurse. i hope the op keeps her whiney post and reads back over it in 5 or 10 years. i'm guessing she'll be a bit embarrassed!

i'll bet she will fell differently. op, it can and does begin to get better. sometimes, you're aware suddenly that things aren't so awful anymore and, other times, it will be so gradual that you'll hardly

notice. for me, it was when a nurse less experienced that i was by only a few months, asked me for

help, and said, "i just knew you'd know what to do."

i practically floated home!

kathy

shar pei mom:paw::paw:

RN1298 · Mar 2, 2010

You don't have to experience what someone else has to treat them with respect or compassion. We each have the capacity to treat each other with that, no matter how much experience you have. Anyway, everyone needs to vent, and I think it's much better to vent (or "whine" J) about your preceptor or preceptee on here than to your family or to coworkers. I've certainly done my fair share of venting on here about my job search! I'm sure it bothers people, but you can always just click to a different thread; so I'd rather make you do that than force my family to listen to me. J So I say "whine" away.

allnurses Guide · Mar 2, 2010

Katie5 the highlighted area in parentheses is virtually invisible to my ole eyes!! :bugeyes: It did serve to lighten up the tenor of your poem, though.

Anyway, I'ved decided that I am either tetched in the head, or I actually went to nursing school and graduated on another planet, because honestly I do not remember the experienced nurses when I was new acting anything like most of what I am reading. They could be gruff, and didn't mince words, but I knew that if they were upset with me, it was because I screwed up!! And even then, I believe they were more upset about the situation, comparable to us yelling at a kid who steps into the street.

It never would have occurred to me that they wanted me to fail, or tried to trip me up, or act mean because they were mean. After I'd been on my first unit for about a year, I spent another year floating a lot because I wanted to work less than full-time hours. There were two charge nurses out of all that really were (imo) awful. One had just got her RN, and they put her as charge too soon. I think it was because she had worked as an aide for quite a while and counted that as experience as a nurse. She had no idea how to make assignments or communicate, but she had major attitude, and could not listen.

The other one was just a b*tch who happened to be a charge nurse. Sorry for the blunt assessment, but I spent quite a while thinking about all the whys and wherefores of these bad experiences and that was the best I could come up with in her case!

Everyone else, they were fine. I'm sure most of them have passed on now, but I think like with our parents, we value their wisdom more as we age ourselves. I know I do. I'm also glad to come to a forum where people put so much time and thought into their posts, for nothing more than to share with fellow nurses/nursing students.

But Katie5, hmmmm. . . stick with nursing. . haaa just kidding. :)

NurseAdida · Mar 2, 2010

i firmly believe that "mean", like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. sometimes those "mean nurses" are honestly trying to help you but you just don't get it.

true but maybe they are just being mean...why would somebody be mean when they are trying to help???

some seasoned nurses are mean...let's be honest, i see them daily and i see how they respond to questions from the new nurses! i was lucky to have none of them as a preceptor...my preceptor was male nurse who started practising the year i was born haha and 3 years later a few states away from him he is still my best friend even though he is 20 something years my senior, he made me who i am today...nd i thank god am one of those approachable nurses,

but to be fair...i have seen really clueless, defensive and annoying new grads that just won't learn and keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again just because they can. makes me wonder if they are doing it for the sake of it or because they are just daft:d

RNandRRT · Mar 2, 2010

i firmly believe that "mean", like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. sometimes those "mean nurses" are honestly trying to help you but you just don't get it.

doubt it. it's like pain. it is what the patient says it is. why would you question it?

instead of understanding they are not getting it, why get mean about it?

i have had teachers, instructors, preceptors and as a student/learner you know who's mean and who's truly devoted to teaching people.

you sure can learn a lot about this profession of ours on this board. not always what you were hoping to learn.

rnsrgr8t · Mar 2, 2010

I think the answer to all of this is probably somewhere in the middle. When I was a new grad, I walked away from my first job traumatized. The preceptor I had as mean and was out to get me... no doubt about it. You know why? I walked in cocky and thinking I knew everything (to hide my deep down fear/insecurity). Once I smartened up and changed my ways... they still could not see how I changed. After a year and a half, I found a different job. Looking back now, we were both responsible. I was for the attitude I cam in with (it was not on purpose, took me awhile to realize I was even doing it). Her fault for refusing to believe I could change and doing everything in her power to try to make me doubt myself and get me in trouble. But you know what... she was an awesome teacher and taught me a lot. There are things I still do (double checking, documenting throroughly, being proactive, using downtime wisely) that she taught me almost 12 years ago. The most valuable thing I learned was to keep my mouth shut and ears open and absorb everything I could (postive or negative). Also, to look at the other side of the conflict and try to see where the other person is coming from. I have a tendency when I am up to my ears in multitasking, stressed and very busy, I get short. I don't mean to, I try really hard not to. The nurses I work with do the same thing. Why? because we are focused and trying to make sure everything gets done. The other APN I work with LOVES to teach. Lives for it. So when she is short, I don't take it personally. When she has a moment to breathe, she will answer whatever I need her to. So I think new grads and preceptor both need to take a deep breath and look at the other side sometimes. Most of the time, people already do that. Sometimes we all need to vent and we should be able to do that. Like with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle.