Congratulations! You survived nursing school and have started your DREAM job as a new grad RN! You’ve hit the ground running and are SO ready to start putting all of the knowledge and clinical skills you’ve acquired to good use! However, as the days pass, you begin to question yourself and start to think that you don’t actually know anything at all, like you didn’t even learn anything in school. How is this possible? Have no fear because NICU Nurse Natalie is here to let you in on a little secret that we ALL feel that way in the beginning! Why? Because nursing school only minimally prepares you for the real job. As they say, “textbook nursing” is completely different than “real-life nursing.” Here are some things that I have learned throughout the years that nursing school didn’t teach me:
How to Give a Good Report
Nursing school doesn’t teach you the fundamentals of how to give a good handoff report. It’s only when you hit the floor and learn how to coordinate your brain and communication skills to deliver the right message that you will understand this process. Giving or receiving report effectively requires you to be alert, precise, accurate, factual, organized, and confident. Only experience teaches you this perfect harmony.
Good Time Management Skills
You will be managing many duties during your shift. Some of these include a TON of charting, keeping up with orders, completing all of your allotted care tasks, communicating with physicians, educating families, and SO. MUCH. MORE. Being quick, thorough, and efficient is an essential skill that nursing school will not teach you. Only when you are a practicing nurse will you understand how to juggle your many tasks and responsibilities to get everything done on time. You MUST keep up or you will fall behind. Drowning in an assignment is not fun and can be very discouraging. Good time management skills and the knowledge about what to prioritize and delegate come with practice and experience. Trust me, you’ll get there!
How to Handle Death
Can anything prepare you for your very first patient death experience? As a new nurse, you might tend to bond with a certain critically ill patient and not be prepared to watch him/her die. It takes a great emotional toll out of any nurse who has encountered this. Death is inevitable, especially in the NICU where we treat very sick babies. Sometimes there are babies who are too broken for this world and do not survive. Coping with death and dying is essential in the workplace, regardless of the department that you choose.
How to Cope With Your Feelings
A nurse’s daily emotions may ride on a roller-coaster. You’ll experience all kinds of feelings… joy, sadness, anxiety, frustration, anger, and excitement. You’ll have adrenaline rushes and face emergency situations. You’ll be exposed to many personalities and people whom you may or may not get along with. You’ll make silly mistakes, question your decision, and doubt yourself extensively. You’ll encounter situations that go against your own personal beliefs. Nurses can experience the entire spectrum of the human emotion in just one shift. However, it’s important to maintain professionalism at all times and to NEVER let any personal thoughts or feelings get in the way of your patient care. Negative emotions and feelings happen, but we need to learn how to manage them, redirect them and ultimately overcome them in our pursuit of nursing.
Compassionate Care and Empathy
You are so much more than JUST a nurse to your patients and their families. You are their educator, teacher, counselor, advocate, confidant, mediator, and friend. If you’ve ever seen a nurse in action, you know that they wear many hats. Yes, school may have taught you how to do complex drip calculations and the pathophysiology of all disease processes, but what it doesn’t teach you about is how to build rapport with your patients and their families. Depending on how long your patients are hospitalized, you may be the only one seeing them and their families on a daily basis. They may be scared, timid, and fearful. They may be worried because they just received news that their baby has a life-threatening diagnosis, or concerned about the cost of their hospital bills. Sometimes all they need is an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on. Patients and families will never forget the way you treated them and how you made them feel, regardless of your nursing school GPA.
What is your, “They never taught me THIS in nursing school” moment??? I would LOVE to know! // Comment below! <3