My First Year As A Registered Nurse

In Australia Registered nurses are primarily obtained from recently graduated university who has successfully finished a three years of education in the bachelor of nursing. New graduates student nurse are very significant to the healthcare sector. The transition from new graduate to registered nurse is challenging which requires support from the entire medical team. The aim of this paper is to explore the transition from student nurse to registered nurse. The paper will focus on the theme skills transition into practice and other issues during the transition.

During my clinical rotation during my last semester of nursing school, I was able to work one on one with a BSN degree nurse named Judy in the ICU. Judy had three years of experience in the ICU setting. She had been a medical surgical nurse prior to her ICU transfer. The ICU at this hospital consisted of two associate degree level nurses and two BSN level nurses on my shift. I rotated three days in this particular ICU. I worked with Judy all three days of my rotation. I was excited about being placed with her for she seemed knowledgeable and skilled. We were given a male post trauma patient to work with all three days. This patient was a 30 year old male admitted for trauma related injuries and was considered unstable and was to be monitored in ICU. This patient had been involved in a motor vehicle accident and

Monday was a slow day at the office, and I was not given a task by my supervisor to complete. I took the initiative to email everyone in my intake department. My email asked if anyone needed assistance with their cases to contact me. An intake case worker saw my email and told an ongoing caseworker who need assistance. The ongoing caseworker asked if I could assist her with transporting a child from the Perseus shelter to the McKean County Court House. The ongoing caseworker said she did not feel comfortable with transporting her teenage girl client in her car alone. The ongoing caseworker wanted another caseworker to monitor the girl’s behavior. I accompanied the ongoing casework with transporting the youth to court. The

During my clinical competency placement, I was working on a surgical ward when a registered nurse on duty asked me to assist Mr. A with his shower. This incident happened on the fifth day of my clinical practice. He was a dementia patient and had undergone right knee total joint replacement. She also informed me that the patient did not like too many people in his room because of his dementia. When I went into his room, his wife was there with him. I talked to the patient about having a shower and getting dressed to look smart and he agreed to have a shower. The patient got out of the bed and walked to the bathroom and sat on the shower chair to have his shower. Then I asked his wife if I needs to stay with him to assist with shower, she said she can help him as she was taking care for him at home since he has been diagnosed with dementia. Therefore, I left the patient with his wife to help with his shower and told her to ring the bell if she needs any help. After some time I left the room, the wife rang the bell. As soon as I entered the room, I heard him shouting at his wife and she started crying and left the hospital. So I had to stay with him. He was very capable of washing himself and I just had to help him wash his back as he requested. After he had washed, I asked him if he was ready to get out of the bath, he started shouting at me.

During my first week of fieldwork I observed a patient in the therapy gym. She was working with physical therapy and the therapist was trying to get her to stand and take a few steps. Even with consistent encouragement from the therapist, her anxiety got the best of her and she refused to walk. That same week she got put on my supervisor’s caseload. Before, we went in to see the patient, my supervisor me told that she had a feeling that we would get denied. Once we entered the room the patient was lying in bed, she had empty soda cans, empty wrappers, and half eaten food in her room. She was very friendly to my supervisor and was more than happy to chat with her. However, once we mentioned therapy the patient’s anxiety increased and she gave every excuse to not attend therapy. Even with education from my supervisor why she should attend therapy, she refused.

A newly graduated registered nurse is well prepared to pass NCLEX for licensure; however, being prepared for the acute care setting in a hospital is a completely different issue. Nursing schools develop the foundation of nursing knowledge, creates critical thinking skills, and touches on nursing tasks. All of these are great tools to possess, but they do not prepare the new graduate nurse for safe, acute patient care. At Boulder Community Health (BCH) on the orthopedic neurology unit, new graduate nurses are given five weeks of orientation. Expecting a newly licensed nurse to learn all of a hospitals policies and procedures concerning patient care and how to incorporate the policies into their practice after five weeks is highly risky and leads to unsafe patient care. On the orthopedic neurology unit at BCH the new nurse trains with several nurses during the five week orientation period. This does not allow for the nurse to learn a consistent system to follow or incorporate into their personal practice as each nurse has their own system. This can become frustrating for the novice nurse. This paper will propose a change in the orientation program at BCH. A one year new graduate nurse residency (NGNR) and mentorship program will be presented to the management administration at BCH. The proposal will serve to prove that a residency program will actually save the hospital money by retaining quality nursing staff through

I had my first two night shift this week on Sunday 9/13 and Wednesday 9/16. I am on 7 West at Sharp Memorial Hospital and the unit is PCU unit with tele monitoring. The unit had a high census this week, but proper staffing and no codes lead to the nights being relatively calm. I was working with Laura who is not my regular preceptor. She stepped in to work with me for this week while Elle, my regular preceptor, was on vacation. I had a wide variety of patients on my two shifts. The first shift I had a patient that was suffering from an exacerbation of COPD with a history of CHF and a patient that had polycystic kidney disease, which had progressed to end stage renal failure. The second shift I had four patients; one patient had been admitted to the hospital multiple times in the past month for GI bleeds, another patient with a history of diabetes and hypertension was admitted for fever and chills and was later diagnosed with sepsis, the next patient had a history of schizophrenia and was found on the ground in her home and was expected to have been there for over 24 hours resulting in deep tissue injury, and my final patient was suspected to have a history of alcoholism and presented to the hospital with shortness of breath and an oxygen saturation of 89%. The first clinical shift I was shadowing my nurse for a majority of the shift. I was being orientated to the unit and learning where to find supplies on the unit. The second shift I took a

The next step was that I went to the manager and discussed the problem at hand with her. Management was unaware that this was going on and a lot of the complaints of family members were not being passed on. Servile unannounced visits were made to the unit to observe these unethical treatments of the residents regarding this issue were brought forth. Astonished, of was being witness, magament started calling staff off the floor and dealing with them individually. This brought forth a lot of gossiping on who would rat out another co-worker and how could report someone for trying to do their job when they always worked short. However, they saw it I did not single report any reticular person it was the work ethics that I brought forward that were

During my first clinical rotation as a nursing student, I was assigned to care for several older adults suffering from dementia. Although all of my patients ranged in severity from mild to severe progression of dementia, they all experienced moments of agitation, anxiety, or disturbed behaviors related to their disease. It occurred to me after careful review of several patient charts that despite often being prescribed pharmaceutical regimes for other comorbidities, these patients were rarely prescribed medications, besides those to control anxiety, specifically targeted at treating their progressing dementia. Through some research I discovered that the significant number of individuals affected with dementia is a growing public health concern in part due to the current limited ability of pharmaceutical treatments to treat the disease (Samson, Clement, Narme, Schiaratura, & Ehrle, 2015). This revelation began my interest in current nonpharmacological treatments being implemented in controlling adverse behaviors and feelings in patients diagnosed with dementia.

During a late shift on the ward, my mentor asked if I would stay with Mrs Smith whilst she gave out medication in order to ensure she wouldn’t be left on her own and fall. I introduced myself to Mrs Smith and sat with her in her room. It became apparent to me quite quickly that she was obviously very confused and she was not fully aware that she was in a hospital, as she repeatedly asked me where she was. On being told she was in hospital she would say no and shake her head. It wasn’t long before she asked me when her husband would be there to take her home, to which I replied

Then, I asked her to please come to me if she had any concerns about my care. Then, she replied “I just think you are slow,’ I replied, “I do not agree, I am organized and finish work in a timely manner, without errors. Later in the week I went to lunch when another supervisor stopped me on my way back to the unit and took me in a room, I said, “what did I do now?” She told me Candy was trying to build a case against me, that I was a good nurse and to be careful. I did not understand, I had done nothing to Candy, also she informed me to double check and recheck my medication and while I am rechecking mine, also check Candy’s. Likewise, if I found errors or omissions, wait till the desk area was full and confront her. I returned to the desk and immediately in front of the supervisor, she jumped on me for being late, and the supervisor intervened, explained she had detained me. Therefore, I did as the supervisor had asked and confronted Candy only one time and she never bothered me again. Consequently, Candy was terminated two months later for stealing drugs on the unit and had to admit herself in rehab, apparently, it was her second time. Consequently, I stayed employed for 14 more years at that organization where I received my experience in intensive care.

I would like to start by saying this has been a fascinating journey for me. With all the highs and lows that I experienced has been keeping me to push forward to getting to the reward of earning my degree. I am excited to say that I am half way there. Being a mother of 4 and grandparent of two is my primary reason for enrolling into CTU. I need to show them that they too can achieve their dreams. Along with myself being in school I have two of my kids attending college one is going to school for mechanical engineering, and the other one is going for Registered Nurse. When I am having a battle with trying to complete my assignment(s) they both call me and say don’t stop now you got this as well as I tell them the same thing when they are

I asked her how would you of felt if she would have harmed someone and you hadn’t done anything to prevent it, she stated I would have felt bad. I also explained to her that if some had been harmed and they found out that she knew the nurse was under the influence and had not reported it that she could be held accountable. The LVN stated when I saw her I actually couldn’t believe that someone would do that at work, I didn’t think about the consequences of what could of happen, if there is a next time I will not hesitate to tell the manager.

The task group I attended was at my internship at St.Elizabeth’s hospital. The purpose of the task group was to come together as co-works and raises our patient satisfaction. One person from every department and five prior patients met together to discuss our goal. My supervisor happened to be the head of our department. Each department discussed what their individual steps to improve patient satisfaction was to the group. St.Elizabeth’s Hospital human resources lead the group. They are the ones who organized and ran the meeting as well. The lady , who was reading the group, did not specify her credentials nor did I catch her name. The group had decided to form at the beginning of March, the meeting was finally held on April 7th at 12 pm to 1 pm. The group was made up of mainly women. There were about four guys in the whole group. There was a representative from each department. There was one doctor, one charge nurse, one from social worker, 1onecase manager, one Physical therapist, and one dietician. Those are just to name a few; I wasn’t familiar with the other groups from the hospital.

About 2:30 in the afternoon, M.E. was in her patient’s room and J.P. confronted her in front of the respiratory staff and students that were present about why she was/wasn’t doing certain things and what was making her so slow; J.P. caught M.E. off guard and was very abrasive, belittling and verbally abusive; M.E. felt attacked and embarrassed, especially since this behavior took place in front of colleagues. J.P. felt frustrated that M.E. was not more competent and efficient in her care and confronted her about it. After the confrontation, there were no words spoken between the two of them for days and even though months have passed, there is still an obvious tension and unresolved conflict between these two individuals. There is currently a noticeable effort being put forth by both women but the conflict they experienced is not yet fixed.