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How To Survive Your First Year As A Nurse
The first year as a new nurse is a roller coaster. One minute you will feel on top of the world and the next minute you will be crying in the bathroom questioning your life’s decisions.
It’s a long process but by the end of your first year as a nurse you should be getting into a groove. Until that time comes here are 6 tips on how to survive your first year as a nurse.
Focus on high quality patient care
The heart of nursing work is patient care. It’s not hospital politics, patient satisfaction surveys, or coworker drama. It’s all about patient care.
It can be easy to get caught up in all that other business, but it will not aid the development your nursing skills in any way. It is best to ignore all that b.s. distraction and focus solely on providing high quality patient care.
Spend time with your patients and learn how to utilize therapeutic communication in the work setting. Learn how to have a proper conversation with patients and their family members.
Review patient history, diagnostic tests, lab work, medication profile, and pertinent demographic information in order to provide holistic care for each of your patients.
Perfect your nursing skills such as IV, NG tube, and Foley catheter insertion. Also, take the time to care for these items on a daily basis. Do not let it become a habit of passing daily maintenance of these types of items onto the next shift.
Focus on learning how to manage your time. Ask veteran nurses about how they organize their day and how they prioritize different patient situations.
If you focus on the core of what it means to be a nurse, then you will adapt to your environment much quicker.
All of the other fluff is non-essential corporate mandated bologna. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s in order to avoid ruffling feathers but do not focus unnecessary attention on tasks that do not actively benefit your patients.
Ask questions
Nursing school prepares you for a lot, but it does not prepare you for everything. There will be a myriad of skills, diseases, medications, etc. that you will feel ill prepared to manage.
It is in those moments that you must remember that you are not alone. There are many individuals of the healthcare team that can help you.
Your nursing staff (RNs, LVNs, CNAs) can help you perform tasks that you may be uncomfortable performing alone. The more experienced nurses may offer you advice and teach you tricks that you can utilize moving forward. I learned so many basic tips and tricks from watching veteran nurses and nurse’s aids.
Your charge nurse can help you in situations in which you don’t know what to do. They can point you in the right direction and help you make certain judgement calls. They will often times consult the physician if needed on your behalf if you must tend to other tasks.
The pharmacy (pharmacists and pharmacy techs) can help you answer questions you may have about medications. There is often a med resource you can access on your work’s intranet, but if you can’t find the answer to your question or just want a second opinion, give your pharmacy a call.
The physicians often get a bad reputation, but they are just as concerned with your patients’ well-being as you are. Obviously, you will want to use this resource only when indicated but physicians provide great insight and guidance.
Case managers, social workers, respiratory therapists, dieticians, physical therapists, chaplains… the list goes on and on. The point is that you are part of a team; you do not have to do it all by yourself.
Advocate for yourself
As a new nurse you should go through a 6-week orientation. During this orientation you will be with a preceptor and they will show you the ropes. You will start off with only taking one patient and then will eventually progress to take on a full load of 5 patients (if you are working on a med-surg unit).
During this time it is important that you keep an open line of communication with your preceptor, charge nurse, and nurse manager. You should make them aware of your strengths and weaknesses; it is important that you feel comfortable with the basic skills of nursing before you are finished with orientation.
Once you are off orientation your coworkers will start to view you as one of their own-a nurse who has had their wings clipped and is in the thick of it.
You may feel like it is your duty as a nurse to drown with the rest of the crew as the ship sinks. However, your ultimate duty as a nurse to ensure patient safety.
If you feel like you are unable to care for a group of patients, then you need to notify your charge nurse. It may seem like a daunting thing to do but you cannot put your license at risk as well as compromise patient safety.
If you truly feel as though your license is on the line, then you may need to enact Safe Harbor. The last thing you want to do is lose your license after you have worked so hard to obtain it.
If you are asked to perform a procedure and feel unequipped to complete it, then you need to notify your charge nurse and ask him/her for help.
Should this be an everyday occurrence? Obviously not. However, as a new nurse (especially during your first few months) you will have days in which you struggle.
You must advocate for yourself and make sure your license is not being put at risk to appease your coworkers or supervisors.
*Unfortunately advocating for yourself will not always lead to any action or steps to help you…but it is still crucial that you voice your concerns and advocate for relevant changes.
Cluster care
The patients we care for want to know that we are doing our best for them and that we are taking care of them to the best of our ability. However, they most likely don’t want us coming into their room every 15 minutes because we forgot to do something the last time we were in their room.
As a nurse you will have a lot of different tasks that you will have to juggle between all your patients. The first year as a nurse you will learn how to manage your time more efficiently to get more proficient at this juggling act.
One of the best ways to do this is cluster the care for each of your patients. If there are several tasks that you can do during one visit into the patient’s room, then get all those tasks done at once.
View each patient interaction as a chance to complete any pending tasks that you have not completed. If they call on the call bell for assistance, you could use that as an opportunity to perform a task that you had planned to complete shortly.
I saw a dramatic increase in my ability to manage my time and patients when I began clustering the tasks for each of those patients.
This can especially be a great tactic if you are working the night shift, which is highly likely if you are a new nurse. The patients will be grateful that you are letting them get as much sleep as possible.
“De-stress” on days off
I can hear some of you laughing now.
Nursing students stay in a constant state of stress throughout nursing school that they sometimes forget there is any other way to feel!
However, now that nursing school is over, hopefully you have some extra time on your days off from work to do things that you want to do.
This can truly be whatever it is that makes you happy or brings you joy.
The point is that you are taking some time for yourself to decompress and de-stress. As nurses we spend so much time caring for others that it is important that we take time to nurture ourselves.
It’s also a great idea to sneak in some exercise on your days off. Exercise has been shown time and time again to help decreased the levels of stress. If you need extra convincing on the importance of exercise in mental health, just do a google search or check out this article from Harvard and I bet you will want to make it a priority.
Be patient
Love is patient. Love is kind. Show yourself some love.
The first year as a new nurse can be brutal. There will be days (maybe even weeks) in which you will question your decision to become a nurse. That is normal and ok.
Don’t give up on yourself. Be patient with yourself.
You will not slay every single shift. There will be shifts where you barely manage to hold it together. Please do not feel like this is a personal failing.
It takes two years of working as a nurse to move past the “novice” status. Two years.
Don’t rush it. Take it slow and be patient.
It also is helpful to try to have a positive attitude even on the days in which nothing seems to go right. Sometimes we have to trick our brains into thinking that things are ok! Go look at yourself in the mirror when you are feeling down and out at work and just smile at yourself for a few minutes to try to convince yourself that everything is going to be ok.
You could probably read 100 tips on how to survive your first year as a nurse and you may still find that you aren’t prepared and continue to struggle during your first year.
Part of the battle is just accepting that nursing is a profession that has a very steep learning curve. You will get through your first year as a nurse even if it is with some cuts and bruises.
You chose this profession to help people and that is exactly what you will do. You will kick butt at being a nurse! It just takes a little bit of time.
If you are a new graduate nurse be sure to also check out the post I wrote about career tips and advice for new working nurses. It pairs nicely with the information provided in this post.
Happy Nursing!