What should I have retained from school? Everything?

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Of course no nurse knows everything, but how about all of the basics? I have been out of school for six months now, and I do my best to retain the info that I learned by going through my Saunders book fairly often. I will hopefully start work in a cardiac cath prep and recovery unit at the beginning of the year. I feel more confident in the cardiac and respiratory areas of knowledge, just from keeping up with my own books. I feel like things that we learned in the first semester of nursing school that we may or may not have done in clinical are still foreign to me, like colostomies, NG tubes, TPN, PEG tubes, etc (seems to be a lot of digestive). These are all things that I learned about two years ago, had little exposure to in clinical, and understood when I was learning, but I am now unfamiliar with. Because this was learned in first semester, are these basics that I should have remained comfortable with? What if I am off orientation for a year or more and these things come up with a patient, and I don't remember anything about them? Of course I won't do anything to put a patient at risk, and I would speak up, but are these acceptable things to need help with? Part of me wants to listen to those who say that you really start learning and become comfortable when you are working. The other part says that I should have remembered these basics, otherwise I am not a real nurse and I have no foundation to build upon.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.

Anything that you have little to no experience with is appropriate to ask for help with. Nurses help each other all the time. You may start out being the one who needs help, but one day you will be the person new nurses go to for help.

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Specializes in M/S, MICU, CVICU, SICU, ER, Trauma, NICU.

Retain everything from anatomy and physiology and I mean EVERYTHING.

Then know the pathophys.

Once you get that down, things flow....

That's what helped me. And ask questions all the time. All the time. Think out loud all the time.

That's it.

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Specializes in VA-BC, CRNI.

The single greatest thing you can do leaving school and going to the floor is know what you do not know!

You do not have to know everything, just know when you are over your head and recognize danger. The single most dangerous Nurse on the floor is the Nurse that thinks he/she knows everything.

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Specializes in med-surg 5 years geriatrics 12 years.

I was given good advice in nursing school. I was told I couldn't possibly remember everything I needed to know but I WOULD know where to look to refresh my memory. And over the years I have found this to be very true.

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

you need to know that you will never know it all, that other people can help, that references are available, and that your education does not stop with graduation.

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you need to know that you will never know it all, that other people can help, that references are available, and that your education does not stop with graduation.

thanks! i know that nurses never stop learning, and that's one of the reasons that I love nursing. i do know my limitations, but my concerns were that these were things that I learned in first semester, so they just seem so basic. i think that I am worrying myself due to the fact that I have been out of school for a while now. thanks everyone :-)

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