Practically a Nurse: Life as a New Graduate RN

By Medora McGinnis, RN, whose last post for this blog was “Don’t Cling to Tradition: A Nursing Student’s Call for Realism, Respect.” Medora is now a pediatric RN at St. Mary’s Hospital in the Bon Secours Health System, Richmond, Virginia, as well as a freelance writer. As a nursing student she was the Imprint Editor for the National Student Nurses Association.

Life as a new graduate RN has been . . . confusing. While my peers seem to have it all together, for the last five months since graduating I’ve been perplexed—what do I do with myself, if I don’t have to stress out and study everyday? Well, of course I have my five kids to keep me busy, an amazing new job as a pediatric RN, and my husband who almost forgot what I look like.

Still, I feel like I should be cramming for something, memorizing something, or at least triple-tasking. I’m stressed that I’m not stressing out. Maybe I just dreamt that I graduated . . .

Here is a little of my backstory: I graduated in May from a three-year diploma program, as part of the very last class in that historic Virginia program, Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing. It is now a four-year BSN program. They are affiliated with the large health […]

2016-11-21T13:09:13-05:00September 25th, 2012|career, Nursing, students|2 Comments
Read More

Web Roundup: Changing Specialties, Measuring Quality, Caring and Freeloading, More

by Ramon Peco/via Flickr

Here are a few things worth noting on the Web today. At Code Blog, “Rookie Mistake” is illuminating on the subject of switching nursing specialties. Here’s a short excerpt:

My new hospice job is going pretty well.  I really like it.  It’s been an adjustment, but worth the stress of change.

Overall, I’ve been pretty surprised at how little I know/knew about how people die naturally.

In ICU, if you are actively dying, you look terrible.  In most cases, people dying in the ICU are there because we were or are trying to save their life.  This requires some treatments that cause other problems. . . . That is what dying looked like to me for 14 years.  Turns out it’s a pretty exaggerated version of how it is when people naturally die without life-saving interventions.

Also notable: a short post that many may relate to about paperwork and burnout, at The Nurse Practitioner’s Place.

In other news, Kaiser Health News reports that the Joint Commission is releasing its annual list of hospitals that have done well in following certain crucial procedures and protocols:

The commission is recognizing 620 hospitals (download list as PDF or .xls file) – 18 percent of those it accredits — as “top performers” for following recommended protocols at least 95 percent of the time.

Congrats to those who made the list. But a caveat: The article does […]

2016-11-21T13:09:14-05:00September 19th, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
Read More

Nursing Research: Alive and Well

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Last week I spent two-and-a-half days in Washington, DC, where there are LOTS of campaign collectibles. My favorite: coffee mugs proclaiming “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote (insert Democratic or Republican).” Also noteworthy: “Hot for Mitt” and “Hot for Barack” hot sauce (see photos). I was there attending the meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science (CANS), where close to 1,000 nursing researchers met to share their work. It wasn’t too long ago that one would have been hard-pressed to find that many nurses doing research. The National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) only celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010 (see our 2010 article about their many accomplishments).

Creativity and innovation. Kathi Mooney, PhD, RN, FAAN, from the University of Utah College of Nursing, gave the keynote—and it was perfectly suited to this group, many of whose members are immersed in analytical thought and scientific methodology. Mooney talked about the importance of creativity and innovation in moving research forward—yes, applying scientific rigor to identifying knowledge […]

2017-05-27T10:35:26-04:00September 17th, 2012|nursing perspective, nursing research|0 Comments
Read More

A Nurse and Mother on Dialing Back the Risk in Football

By Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor

One Monday afternoon when my son Bryan was a senior in high school I got a call from him. He had hurt his back during football practice and was in so much pain he couldn’t move to get into his car. I rushed over to the field and found him standing, tense and still. When I lifted his shirt to look at his back, I gasped. The entire lumbar area was rounded and swollen out to the size of a grapefruit. At the hospital tests revealed he had a large hematoma, no critical damage done. The first question Bryan had for the doctor—“Can I play on Saturday?”

All week he insisted he could play and I insisted he couldn’t. His arguments never let up—he was quarterback and Saturday’s game was with an archrival. There wasn’t time for the backup quarterback to learn the plays, his team depended on him. Finally I made a bargain. We would go see his physician, whose judgment I trusted, and we would both respect his opinion, whichever way it went.

He played. One of the coaches wrapped his back in layers of padding with an ACE bandage and out he went. It was a brutal game. As determined as he was, the pain still slowed him […]

2016-11-21T13:09:20-05:00September 14th, 2012|nursing perspective, Public health|1 Comment
Read More

Passion and Fear: Signs of a Kindred Nursing Spirit

Florence Nightingale in Crimean War, from Wikipedia Commons

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Love Song of Frank,” was published in the May issue of AJN.

“It’s not that we want something bad to happen; we just want to be there when it does.”

One of my colleagues recently saw that phrase on a T-shirt, and it perfectly echoes the sentiment of the ICU nurses I work with. We’re prepared for crises, primed for instability—and the lower acuity patients who have been populating the ICU lately leave many of us restless and discontented. We start to miss the dramatic cases, the incredible saves and miracles; we miss using our skills. We do see the irony of being in the awkward position of wishing for trauma patients, yet not actually wishing ill on anyone.

I haven’t always embraced unstable patients. When I was a new nurse I simultaneously dreaded yet was drawn to the instability of the ICU. I remember the early morning drives into work, a time of quiet anticipation filled with a gnawing fear that I’d make a mistake or be inexcusably inadequate at a crucial time.  I’d pray to gods above to be good enough, to be up to the tasks of the day; I clearly recall, more than once, taking report on an unstable patient and getting physically sick. Dramatic, I know, but born […]

2016-11-21T13:09:21-05:00September 12th, 2012|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top