Call for help the minute your patient looks off to you, not once you are sure. Needing help is not a mark against you. It puts more eyes on the patient, sooner.
“The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.”
— Florence Nightingale
Some shifts end with you crying in your car because it all catches up at once. That is allowed. Just say out loud, to someone you trust, that it was a bad one.
Get certified in whatever you keep gravitating toward. After my wound care certification it was like new glasses: I saw what I had not known to look for.
“Willingly, had they accepted me, I would have worked for the wounded, in return for bread and water.”
— Mary Seacole
When you are unsure and everyone else is slammed, try this: if another nurse walked up and put that exact question to you, what would you tell them to do?
Someone on clinicals may say something that has you wondering if you are cut out for this. Do not take it to heart. A couple of bad days are not the profession.
Three or four years went by before the overwhelmed feeling lifted, and close to six before I felt expert at the bedside. Measure this in years, not months.
Expect the unexpected every shift and at every hour of it. The part you can learn is flexibility: managing a bit of chaos, and finding something in it to enjoy.
“But time has helped to settle the question and a trained nurse’s position now is largely what she herself makes it.”
— Isabel Hampton Robb
Most of what a dying person's family needs is to hear that nothing has gone wrong, that this is what dying looks like, and that they are caring for them well.
There will always be one more patient and one more paper. Your kid is only a toddler once. Do not give the people at home what is left at the end of the week.
