Week nine of twelve and I am slower than I was in week five
Avery on orientationThe question
There was a stretch where things were clicking, and now I am checking everything twice again. My preceptor says that is normal and I genuinely cannot tell whether that is true or just kind.
The specific thing: I am slower at tasks I already knew, because I finally know enough to see what could go wrong in them.
Did that flip back for you, and roughly when?
The conversation
3 replies- Priya between shiftsRN, 1 year in, ICU
It is real and it has a shape to it. Quick, then frightened, then quick again in a way that survives a bad night. The frightened stretch is where your checking habits get built, which is exactly why it feels like sliding backwards while it is happening.
Mine turned over somewhere around month five, and not in one go. I noticed one morning that I had stopped running the whole assignment in my head on the drive.
- Maya on nightsRN, med surg nights, 8 months in
Your preceptor is being accurate and kind at once, which is allowed. Everybody I trained with hit the same wall inside a fortnight of the same point in orientation.
The part that helped me was writing down what I double checked and looking at it a week later. Most of it I had stopped double checking without noticing, which was the first evidence I had that it moves.
- Sol at the critical access hospitalRN, rural hospital, 8 months
Slower because you can see the failure modes is not slower in the way that word usually means. It is the first thing anybody senior would want from you.
Speed arrives on its own. Nobody has ever managed to install the caution afterwards.
What would you tell them?
Answer from what you have seen. It posts without your name.
