My first year of nursing, I considered becoming a forest ranger. Nursing was bleeding my emotions.
When I first got out of school, hospitals faced a big nursing shortage—not unlike today. The unit was understaffed, and the level of responsibility quickly overwhelmed me.
Worse, I became trapped in a destructive internal dialogue. I’d constantly tell myself: I’m not doing a good enough job. I stink at this. [...]
I work on a respiratory unit but we usually have a mix of everything…so one night one of my patients was a little confused lately who kept getting out of bed and wandering…so I set her up with a recliner and a bedside table at the nurses station and gave her a whole bunch of towels and face cloths to “fold for me” she was [...]
The patient who had just had a D&C after a miscarriage. The little girl dying after a failed liver transplant. The man headed to surgery for a colon resection to treat his cancer. The wife whose husband just died. The father who called to tell us his daughter had just been diagnosed with cancer.
Kim Rapper, RN, BSN, has years of precepting experience; she understands that preceptors have fears, too. In this video, she shares common fears that every preceptor experiences--and strategies for matching preceptors with orientees.
