First shift alone on behavioral health and nothing clinical went wrong
Wren on behavioral healthThe question
Came off orientation last week. The thing I braced for did not happen. What happened instead is that I spent nine hours making judgement calls with no one to check them against, and went home wired at midnight.
On my unit the skill is de escalation, reading a room, and knowing when a conversation has stopped being useful. There is no task list for any of that.
For anyone off orientation in a specialty where the work is mostly judgement: how did you learn to tell a good shift from a lucky one?
The conversation
2 replies- Indira in home healthRN, home health, 2 years
This is most of my job and the honest answer is that you learn it by describing shifts out loud to somebody who does the same work. Not to debrief a crisis, just the ordinary ones.
A good shift has reasons you can name afterwards. A lucky one, you find you cannot say why it went the way it did, and noticing that gap is the whole skill.
- Marisol on oncologyRN, oncology, 2 years
Wired at midnight is the tell that you were holding the whole shift yourself, which is what off orientation actually means and nobody warns you.
What helped was a ten minute handover with one colleague where I said the two calls I was least sure about. Cost nothing, and it moved the second guessing out of my car and into a conversation.
What would you tell them?
Answer from what you have seen. It posts without your name.
