So apparently I am not so good at regularly updating my blog. STOP THE PRESSES!! Seriously though, no big shock there. I will now add blogging to the list of things I am horrible at, despite my best intentions: writing letters, doing laundry, grocery shopping, Skyping my sister, and lately, riding my bike. :(
My sister, speaking of, never ceases to amaze me. I jokingly call her my "mini me" but she is really so much more than I could ever dream of being. She is a pre-med student yet somehow finds time to run marathons and volunteer at homeless shelters, among countless other extra-curricular activities. Did I mention that she is studying abroad in Costa Rica right now? And that she is leaving her host family early to volunteer at a hospital in Honduras? Amazing, right? Read more about her adventures here!
As far as my comparatively mundane life goes, not much to report. I have been bounced around to several units and two different shifts at the hospital to continue my orientation. While in theory, orienting to different settings with different patients and different nurses is providing me with some great experience.... it is also making it a bit harder to find my "groove". After a few days on one unit or shift, I seem to get my bearings and feel semi-competent. Unfortunately at that point I am moved again and start all over. I was so happy to finally get back to my home unit but I then had a couple of really bad days that left me feeling incompetent and scatterbrained, which in turn led to a lot of laying awake at night beating myself up over things I "could have maybe done differently." Needless to say, not a productive use of my time, especially much-coveted time off over the holiday (since I'm still on orientation I get holidays off... SCORE!).
Somewhere around my second semester in nursing school I realized that this was the kind of job that no one is really great at when they start. No matter what your GPA in nursing school is, you aren't a "good" nurse right away. It takes time. Since that point, I have tried to mentally prepare myself for this feeling. Unfortunately all the mental preparedness I could muster wasn't enough. It still SUCKS. This post from Not Nurse Ratched compares being a new nurse to being a newly licensed driver, and it makes a lot of sense to me. Being granted a drivers' license doesn't mean you are a good driver, it just means you meet some minimal standard of safety. I don't remember there being a tangible transition from "new" driver to "experienced" driver but it definitely happened somewhere along the way. I suppose I just have to trust that with time and experience and continued focus on learning, the same sort of transition will happen for me in nursing. Some days, I wish there was a fast forward button though.
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