When will the nervousness go away...

[mama09LPN]

I am a LPN with about 6 mo. experience working in a clinic. When I look back to when I started, I know I have improved greatly. Clinic nursing had only been briefly covered in school so needless to say, I had to hit the ground running when I started. My actual orientation was about 3 weeks and the nurse that oriented me gave a pretty good overview of what I needed but still, sometimes you can't think of every situation so if it didn't happen, she didn't go over it. That left me learning a lot of things on my own, particularly with the documentation. Like most nurses I suspect, I am a perfectionist, so for each thing I felt like I could do better, I have strived and stressed to do so. I believe I have gotten things down but I always worry that I didn't do things right in the beginning, what if I missed this, didn't do this... etc. I am my worst critic and sometimes I will go through these sites and just make myself worry even more. Honestly, I stress over things that probably never happened and I don't know... sometimes it makes me doubt my own ability to go ahead for my RN. I am a second career nurse, have worked and thrived in high stress environments but yet, I come home and have panic attacks only to go back to work the next day to realize that I worry myself over nothing. I have other stress factors that home that are completely unmodifiable and I am starting to think that perhaps I just chose the wrong career and don't know what to do...

[LETRN]

Don't feel like you're alone...because even though I truly enjoy my job, I have major anxiety every time I go to work. I've only been working for about 6-7 weeks, but I still don't feel like I know enough to be doing what I'm doing. I get positive feedback, but I go home each day running through the day's events in my mind and beating myself up for things that I'd forgotten or things I should have done differently. I hope it doesn't last forever

Good luck to you, hang in there! I'll try to take my own advice