At Stat Staff, we often reach out to nurses and allied health professionals to learn more about their experiences on the front lines of the healthcare industry.
Leah stopped by the office and took some time to talk about her first year as a registered nurse, and the importance of preceptors. Watch above.
Stat Staff is always looking for nurses and allied healthcare professionals to share their experiences. Message us to tell your story.
First Year of Being an RN: Leah's Story (Transcript)
"Nursing is very different from any other profession that I've ever personally encountered, and your first year of nursing is very challenging.
You're trying to figure out who you are. You're trying to figure out your way of practicing as a nurse and your art of nursing. In order to be successful, you really have to go in with an open mind. You have to be willing to listen to your patients.
You have to be willing to listen to your senior nurses. It can be a cutthroat industry, where the older nurses, as they say, can eat their young.
And you really have to stand firm to your beliefs and your feelings of taking care of your patients, because at the end of the day it falls on you and your license. And you have to listen to cares and concerns. You have to listen to that inner voice that tells you if something's wrong. You need to follow through and follow up with doctors and senior nurses or even nurses that have just started with you.
School prepares you as much as school can prepare you, but every day is a learning experience and you have to be humble about that. You have to accept defeat. You have to admit when you're wrong, and you need to ask for help when you need help.
Where I came from at the hospital that I started as a nurse, there wasn't specifically a mentor program per se. It was, you have your nurse residency which kind of just gets everyone together who started at the same time together, to talk about their experiences, and who you've reached out to for help. Say if there was a code or something went really bad or when there was times and you really wanted to celebrate an accomplishment.
Where I came from, you had your preceptors and I was fortunate in having a preceptor. I had two. One had been a nurse for over 35 years and the other preceptor had been a nurse about a year and a half by the time she started to teach me her way of nursing. And so I got to see two totally different ways of nursing.
I got to see a nurse who was more geared to how I had learned to be a nurse, who was more tech savvy you could say. And I had a nurse who had seen changes over decades of how nursing was.
I was extremely fortunate that I got to model my nursing after two totally different forms of nursing, and that personally helped me tremendously.
I got to see the more the caring aspect of side of how someone can nurse and then the more science-based side of how people can nurse.
For me I've now gone into nursing with both of those being a huge backbone for me and how I take care of my patients.
So in school they teach you a lot of theories of Nursing. I got very lucky and I went to a school where it was very clinically based, and I got a substantial amount of clinical hours to help prepare me.
However that first day alone without that preceptor is terrifying. To be by yourself, nothing can prepare you for that first 12-hour shift where you're by yourself, and you have to sink or swim.
And in school you know you learn your theory you learn clinical skills but nothing can teach you how to perfect them under your own talents and your own skills.
The school doesn't prepare you for that nurse that's been a nurse for 40 years and she's gonna yell at you could you forgot one little thing and they're not gonna pat you on the back when you did your job because you did your job and kept the patient alive.
So you can’t, you can't look for that constant reward like when you're in school, you're like, “oh, I did really good on that test” or “you know, I did really good setting up that IV,” or what have you.
You're doing your job at this point and no one's gonna say good job for doing your job cuz that's your job that's what you signed up for. So, you have to…school doesn't prepare you for the real world experience it only sets you up for the things that can kind of come your way.
If there's one thing I could tell a new nurse going into the field it would definitely be to admit your wrongs to accept that defeat and just move forward. Just grow from that experience and never forget it again."