In this video I will be giving tips for nurses who just graduated nursing
school.
I will talk about what I wish I knew during my first year of working as a new
grad nurse, and what I thought was very helpful in my practice and my
everyday life.
(INTRO)
In this channel I talk about all aspects of nursing from pre-nursing to post
graduate programs.
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Alright so the first I tip I have is to locate resources that you give to patients
and know the resources very well.
This will often teach you many of the patients you see and it will educate you
on different resources that your local hospital has to provide for the patient.
Think about it, your educator has spent a lot of time putting together
resources for patients and it would be very useful for you to know when to
use them to benefit not only the patient but yourself as well.
The next tip I have is to bring a separate note book to shifts, or take a piece of
paper to your shift and write down things that you do not know.
During the first year, you are constantly learning new things, whether it is
new conditions or new drugs.
Writing them down and studying them after work or on your days off will help
you provide not only better care but also practice safely.
A few things I did was I studied the pathophysiology of a condition and first
line treatments for that condition.
This helped me for my NCLEX and it also allowed me to quickly identify a
theme of patients that we saw on the floor I was working at.
Another tip that I can give for new grad nurses is to always consider the
bigger picture.
Your hospital has a lot of policies and procedures and in school you've
learned how to do certain tasks in a way to protect yourself legally and the
patient.
However these are policies that are meant to work in 80% of the situations,
there are situations that you will have that will make you question whether it
is the BEST decision for the patient.
And always think about what is best for the patient, that will make sure you
do nothing wrong.
I am not saying go against the policies, but what I am saying is sometimes
look at the patients presentation and think about the bigger picture.
What are we treating with the patient?
what is the purpose of my care this shift?
asking these questions will help guide your decision making based on logic
rather than policy.
The last tip I have for new grad nurses going into work is to help out
colleagues as much as possible.
You are a new person on the unit, go out of your way to help make other
nurses life easier and you will be rewarded with great friendships, trust and
you will be able to take part in awesome learning experiences.
I remember when I was starting out, I did everything I could to help out the
senior nurses so that they could teach me cool skills and they always did.
They always remembered me when they were putting in a suprapubic
catheter, a NG tube or even a foley and they let me do it.
That is how I quickly became proficient at certain skills, I was nice to others
and they were nice to me in return.
Those are a few tips I have for new grad nurses in 2021.
Hopefully this video was helpful, if you have any tips for new nurses leave
them down below!