What is your greatest fear in nursing.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Trauma and Psychiatry.

My hard working peers, my greatest fear in nursing is giving the wrong medication to a patient in error, resulting in the death of the patient. What is your greatest fear related to nursing?

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Specializes in Medical Surgical Orthopedic.

Mine is the same.

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working in both the NICU and peds CICU my biggest fear is missing something in my assessment, missing a subtle sign of decompensation or not insisting more to a doctor that something is wrong with my patient, any of which lead to a patients death

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Specializes in CVICU, Obs/Gyn, Derm, NICU.

That I'll finally have enough .... and walk away abruptly.

Leaving behind my license and income (not very sensible, I know)

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Specializes in Addiction, Psych, Geri, Hospice, MedSurg.

My biggest fear is our litigious society... even if we do not do something wrong, there is always some chance of us being sued.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Trauma and Psychiatry.

Wow! no one knows the intense emotional pressure nurses are under, yet we seem so poised and calm on the surface. We are like ducks/swans - cruising elegantly but underneath the water our legs are moving lightening fast (so to speak...). Hope ya'll understand what I trying to say.

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My fear is also to screw up the medications. I'm also fearful of open wounds even thought I'm sure you can get use to that.

I'm a CNA contemplating going back to school for nursing, but that has to be my biggest fear.

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Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.

Have you ever woken up in the morning and had cobwebs in your brain? Had a few cups of coffee, gotten your blood pumping, but still find yourself having brain farts?

My biggest fear is having the cobwebs in residence when a pt is crashing, and I forget my algorithms. Granted, there are anesthesiologists in the OR, but I have found on more than one occasion that I recognized a lethal pattern before the anesthesia care provider did. It scares me to realize this fact.

I remember one specific case in which the new anesthesiology resident wasn't paying attention to the case, the monitor, or his pt. He was more interested in talking over the drape to the surgical residents about his wakeboarding experience last weekend (it was TOTALLY gnarly, dudes! Those wakes were SICK!). As I was charting in the corner, I thought that I heard the pt's HR steadily dropping, and went over to the monitor to see what was going on. Sure enough, the pt was bradying down. I immediately alerted the Gnarly Wakeboard Master Supreme to this finding, and I tell ya, he couldn't find his butt with both hands. I paged the attending, and things were taken care of. Another big fear of mine...staff not paying attention.

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Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.
Wow! no one knows the intense emotional pressure nurses are under, yet we seem so poised and calm on the surface. We are like ducks/swans - cruising elegantly but underneath the water our legs are moving lightening fast (so to speak...). Hope ya'll understand what I trying to say.

Yes, we are mostly calm under pressure...but in my personal experience, I pay for this calm under pressure. It takes about 24-48 hours for me to process a traumatic event emotionally. We must divorce our emotions during codes/traumas/emergencies. We are trained to do so, and I am grateful that we can do this as nurses.

I find that I can let go of these emotions by talking to my husband or to my BFF who is also a nurse. I really wish that my facility had "hot washes" like the military does to discuss the events that unfolded and to vent about what we experienced. It certainly does my soul a whole lotta good to talk about stressful events with those who participated in the events.

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Specializes in Emergency Medicine.

Gee, made it 8 days before repeating...

https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/what-scares-you-589725.html#post5364571

Alright, I'll play again: Ardvarks. Really fearful of Ardvarks in nursing.

aardvark_432_600x450.jpg

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My biggest fear in nursing is that I will run into a situation where the patient will be crashing and I won't know what to do or, worse, I do something wrong. I really hope this never happens and I am thankful that the medical staff is a team! If I don't know what the heck I'm doing, I know that someone will!

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Specializes in LTC, Psych, Hospice.

As a home hospice nurse, I often attend the death of a pt. My biggest fear is to state to the family and coroner that the pt is gone and have the pt start breathing again. I've been doing this for >12 years and everytime I attend a death, it's the same fear.

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