So you’ve just started your new job as a new graduate nurse. You have a great preceptor, you like your unit, and your manager seems pretty cool. But you dread going to work. You get report and you’re already an hour behind. You’re already an overwhelmed nurse. There are so many things to do right this second that you shut down. You can’t do this. It’s too much. You struggle through each day, just trying to get to the end of the shift. You are elated for days off. You dread going back. Is this really what you signed up for? Will this EVER end?
emotional support
When Your Patient Starts Crying
One of the first questions you may ask yourself in your nursing career is “What to do when a patient starts crying.” Everyone has their own forte’, and for some, providing emotional support to people in crisis can be an OMG WHAT DO I DO moment. It can be uncomfortable. It can be weird. It […]
Nursing Time Management for When You’re Totally Overwhelmed
This post contains affiliate links It never fails. You start your day with the best nursing time management intentions. You started your assessments and meds on time (woo hoo!), and then all of a sudden three doctors round at once and expect you to implement their orders immediately. One patient needs to pee, one needs […]
An Ode to My Steering Wheel
Many things are synonymous with nursing… stethoscopes, nursing caps and pins, a solid pair of Danskos…but one of nursing’s unsung hero’s is our steering wheel. A day at work that has me on the verge of tears all day has me yearning for that moment when I can stumble to my car, close the door, […]
Why I Can’t Cry With You
Since my post I Wish I Could Cry With You, But I Can’t went up, there has been quite a large response. I felt the need to write a follow-up post to further explain myself. I think that a lot of nurses really understood what I meant with my post, but those that either aren’t nurses or […]
You’re a Life Saver. Literally
I don’t know if any of you nurses out there struggle with what I’ve been fighting over the last year or so. Whenever I’m in a large crowd and see elderly people or someone not looking so hot, I play the worst-case scenario out in my mind. They collapse. I run over. Start CPR. Yell […]
For The Anxious Nurse
After being in the field for a while, I’ve noticed a common theme… anxious nurses. We see people die during a normal day at work. Our normal day is someone’s last. At any moment, someone’s heart can stop and we’re responsible for restarting it. Someone can stop breathing and we’ve got to know what to do […]
Sitting Down for Your Patient
I went to NTI in Denver, Colorado this last week. For those of you that don’t know, it’s an annual national conference for critical care nurses. And it’s awesome. I went to a lot of sessions. Some on brain death, some on vasoactive drips, on sepsis, and hyponatremia.. but the ones that hit me the hardest […]
Bless Your Nursey Hands
Every year for Nurse’s Week, our chaplain comes by every unit to bless the nurse’s hands. Just stop to think about that for a second. At my job, the chaplain comes to us to bless our hands. Doesn’t that just humble you to the floor? That just really, really touches me. It really makes me […]
Holistic Nursing Care
Thank you for your blog, and the words you use to instruct and encourage new nurses. I love reading what you have to say, and I have already used your advice when paging a physician during night shift! Definitely helped me prepare and keep my confidence. My question is this: how do you balance your […]
Hear What You Want: Working With Jerks
Nursing can be a very humbling career path. In nursing school, you’re constantly told how to do things and being corrected, and not always in the most gracious ways. And then when you get your big fancy nursing job, you feel like you just went from 8th grade, where you’re on the top of the […]
A Nurse’s Confession: Sometimes I Hate My Job
But not in the way you’d think. It’s not the hours or the pay or the poops. It’s how keenly and constantly aware I am of our precious and fragile lives. Today while I was driving, I came up behind a car with an “organ donors save lives” bumper sticker and I immediately thought, that […]
Our Nursing Reality – Part II
Back in November, I posed a question to my nursey Twitter buds: If you were on a reality show.. what moment in your nursing career would you want the world to see? #nursingreality The response was jaw dropping. Every single tweet I read moved me to tears… either from laughing so hard or being so […]
When You Want to Quit
When you’re working on your pre-req’s and going through nursing school, in your first few years of nursing school, or just switched specialties, it gets really tough sometimes. So much information is being thrown at you that you have no idea what’s important and what’s not, and you begin to wonder if you’re just totally […]
Nursing Mistakes That Will Make You Feel Better
Sometimes just hearing someone else’s stories makes you feel better about your own anxiety. Read these nursing mistakes and know that you are not alone. Real Nursing Mistakes That Actually Happened Did you just start out as a brand new nurse and feel totally overwhelmed? I was too! There is hope; it does get easier. […]
Comfort Care Conversations
As a nurse, having comfort care conversations are some of the toughest ones you will have with a patient’s family. But they have to happen. Here’s how to do them as painlessly as possible. How to Have Comfort Care Conversations With Family Members These can be rough. But they have to happen. When They Happen The […]
Dealing With Difficult Families
You know it’s bad when the first thing the nurse says in report is that the patient is fine but the family…. Let’s talk about difficult families.