Nervous and excited is normal.
It’s late June and by now most new grads are beginning their careers. Based on tradition, most of you will be working in the acute care setting. Some may have found positions, like my niece did when she graduated, in out-of-hospital surgical centers, or perhaps you’ve taken a position in a nursing home or long-term care facility. Wherever you’ve landed, we know you’re likely to be a mix of nervous and excited.
First, don’t worry—everyone, even the nurse manager who scares you, was new once. Over time, you’ll get more comfortable with your skills and gain confidence.
Photo by Ashley Gilbertson / The New York Times / Redux.
The basics.
Be prepared, show up on time, ask questions; be the person you’d like to work with. Offer to help others when you can and you’ll find it easier to ask when you need a hand.
One of our younger editorial board members, Amanda Anderson, has written several articles for our Transition to Practice column, all aimed at recent nursing school graduates. The articles range from preparing for the first day on the job to delegating and how to give report, and other topics. The latest, “Surviving Your First Code,” is now available in our July issue.
We’ve grouped all of these together in a New to Nursing collection on our Web site, www.ajnonline.com. To help you start on the right foot, we’ll make them free until July 7.
Resources for new nurses.
We hope you find these articles helpful. As the leading broad-based nursing journal for over 119 years, AJN has what new nurses need to start their careers on the right path:
- News impacting your practice and the profession
- Evidence-based clinical articles with best practices
- Original nursing research and QI reports
- Two CE articles in each issue
- New drug alerts and summaries of important research and articles in other health and medical journals
- “Step by Step” series on implementing evidence-based practice (EBP)
- Legal and ethics columns to help guide your decisions
- Article collections, podcasts, and videos to aid learning and patient teaching
Congratulations and welcome to nursing!
I started working in a pediatric emergency room last year. I have been a nurse for 8 months now and I still find these articles relevant. I ask a million and one questions if I have a case that I am not thoroughly familiar with and I have found a way to be comfortable with that. I always wanted to be a pediatric nurse so I was already semi-prepared for the field. But it is always super important to be updated in the field, not only in research but any certificates or specific things you need to freshen up with. The article on surviving the first code is very useful! I dreaded my first code and now I love being involved in all the action. Overall, it is important to know that being a new nurse is dreadful (and you’ll be a new nurse for a couple of years) but little by little you grow comfortable in your position.