17 Jan TIPS FOR A FRESH NURSE
Starting as a fresh nurse can seem overwhelming, with the new procedures and policies in the new health facility. Here are some few tips to help you start your new journey.
1. Be Assertive
The very first tip is that you must learn how to be assertive. This means you have to know yourself and learn how to confidently stand up for yourself, even in very nerve-wracking situations. It’s a fact – being around other nurses and health care assistants can be intimidating.
You just have to get used to situations like this. It’s perfectly healthy for you to stand up for yourself. If you don’t understand something, ask. You must speak up for yourself.
2. Come with a Teachable Mentality
You need to be teachable and show up to work eager and ready to learn. Don’t show up with an arrogant know it all personality. It’s a good way to be disliked, and you won’t learn as much.
3. Set Realistic Expectations for Your Development as a Nurse
Next, you need to give yourself grace and allow yourself time to learn it all. The “I’m going to ace this” mentality might fade away when reality hits. Don’t think you’ve failed, access and re-strategize. Having realistic expectations will improve your morale. Give yourself grace. Good morale will help you focus on improving on each shift and you will get so much more out of orientation. You’ll be in a better mindset to learn from your mistakes.
4. Learn About Common Nursing Principles Before and After Work
Similarly, another tip is to save the bookwork for when you are home. While you are at the hospital, you will need to focus and learn everything as it is happening. Take time at home to dive deeper into things like medication, mechanism of action, and disease processes so that when you are at the bedside, you are learning things you can only learn at work. You’ll need to learn things like where instruments are and what they are called among so many other things.
5. Find a Mentor
Get yourself a mentor as well. Make a habit of forming new bonds and relationships. There will be days when it literally will “take a village” for you to make it through the shift.
6. Form Friendships
Network and make friends, this could be outside your specific nursing unit. On slow days when you’re not really doing a lot, and your patients are stable see who else needs help.
7. Find a Way to Manage Your Stress
You’ll be stressed from being a new nurse from patients, doctors and other coworkers. Most of these probably won’t happen at the same time, but it is a lot of stress to try to manage. Get a hobby, meditate. Take u an activity that’ll help you medicate or manage stress.
8. Be Your Own Advocate
Lastly, be your own advocate. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Make sure you’re looking after your best interest because if you don’t do it. Nobody else will.
Finally, when you go into the facility with the correct attitude and invest in learning while you are at home, you will thrive as a new nurse. Give yourself grace – this is one of the most overwhelming places to start a new job.
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