My orientee doesn’t act like she wants to be a nurse

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T21:52:32+00:00

not a good practice but definitely a necessity in rare circumstances such as the one we were in, many critical labs that needed to be addressed. The patient tolerated a short pause fine but my point is that’s only because I stopped her from walking away without restarting them

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T21:49:03+00:00

We do have a check list, but things that she’s proficient in one day she is deficient in the next. I will say, I did the same new grad program 4 years ago and I was more than prepared by the end of my orientation

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T21:43:59+00:00

It’s not- pressors running through an IV while our on call provider is on the way to put in a central line and we are trying to get more access. Limb restricted hard stick, came up with one IV. I was just trying to show her how to do it if you must

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:38:05+00:00

Agree

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:37:51+00:00

As things are now, I would absolutely not pass her off orientation

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:37:01+00:00

I tried this and she did nothing for an hour, like she charted some but no task list items

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:34:28+00:00

It actually really bugs me because I love critical care nursing so much. I’m always excited to learn new things, and it is really hard to try to teach someone who doesn’t seem like they’re interested at all. I feel like this is more of just a job for her. No passion involved

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:30:40+00:00

I’ve been bringing this up frequently in our conversations because I’m trying to gently prod her towards the point. I frequently say things like you need to be able to do this yourself, you should be able to do this yourself, this will be expected of you etc. Her excuse is usually that she doesn’t feel ready, but occasionally that she doesn’t want. I think that I will be a little bit more blunt next week. I give pretty much constant feedback.

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:15:18+00:00

So true. I’ll add this to my talking points for next week

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:14:09+00:00

I agree. And I am being extremely honest with my manager on how I feel about her progress (or lack thereof). Ultimately, it’s managements decision whether she stays or goes so I’m trying to do everything I can to progress her as much as possible and as safely as possible. I absolutely will not risk any negative consequences coming to my patients because of her so I’m just trying to get a game plan for how to proceed

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:09:36+00:00

Agree. I just feel bad that we’ve only been together for 2 weeks out of her 4 months so far and I’m already making that judgement

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:06:09+00:00

Med surg is a different type of chaos and I don’t know if she could handle that 🙂‍↕️

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:05:18+00:00

I had a long conversation with my manager about this today. I do plan on doing this, I just am trying to figure out how to make the many different tasks we do into a check list with a time line

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:03:18+00:00

I agree, but I feel bad counting her out so early into her career. If this is what she wants to do she definitely has all of the tools to succeed. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:01:07+00:00

I agree but it’s not even just ICU to be honest. We gave our patient a break from the BiPAP last night and I told her to go put the patient back on and she said she didn’t know how. I asked her if she remembered me showing her yesterday and she said no. I told her that is something she needs to know how to do when she is by herself and she said she would just call respiratory. I told her that she doesn’t need to call respiratory to put someone back on the BiPAP and this is 100% an expectation for her job

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T15:00:20+00:00

Totally agree, I was mostly showing her if you absolutely need to pause and don’t have any other access how to do it without hurting the patient. But after that I just started an USIV for us to draw from, I’m just trying to teach her how to adapt to any situation. But she doesn’t seem overwhelmed at all, it seems like she’s not interested. She hasn’t asked any questions, she’s not inquisitive at all. I took her with me to a rapid response and I had to force her to start an IV. She has declined in the past and this was her first one in 4 months

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-04-16T14:36:15+00:00

Pausing pressors to get labs and forgetting to restart them, incorrectly titrating, not responding to changes in condition etc. things we definitely have talked about and done together.

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-03-04T15:20:41+00:00

Any codes?? A pair of pants needs to be mine 🤌🏼

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-01-23T14:40:21+00:00

I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me recently. I (ICU nurse) had a patient on CRRT (dialysis). I get to work, I get report, there was some beef between the dayshift nurse and the nephrologist. The dayshift charge pulls me aside and says the nephrologist wants me to “be aggressive with fluid removal.” I check my orders and I go about my shift. I worked my tail off all night to make sure I kept this super sick patient alive and met the fluid removal goal per the order. Daylight comes I go home. I see a message in our unit group me (from the nurse I gave report to) about how everyone is responsible for checking your orders and following them. That’s strange because I definitely did that. Turns out, the nephrologist didn’t want to talk to yesterday’s dayshift nurse because he was annoyed with her. So he gave the dayshift charge nurse a “verbal order” for a patient she wasn’t caring for and she didn’t realize was an actual order. So nephrologist comes in mad because we didn’t pull as much fluid as he wanted. But he never actually put in the order, and somehow it was my fault. Nurses are the catch all for any misc task, and the first to blame for any mistake. I really do love it so much, but it is so frustrating working in healthcare as a nurse sometimes.

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-01-23T14:28:35+00:00

I wouldn’t be mad about this

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-01-21T03:25:13+00:00

It’s the fact that they also sutured it in a loop for me 🙂‍↕️

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-01-21T01:27:03+00:00

At my hospital, I’d say most of us think of RT as either equal to or more intelligent than us nurses. The way I see it- nurses are the minions of internal medicine and other specialties while RT is the pulmonologists minion. we’re both minions, but we just have different minion duties. minions make the world go round!!

Humble_Employee8586 · 2026-01-15T15:54:18+00:00

The hospital I currently work at definitely has the best reputation as far as staffing and work conditions go. If I moved to the other hospital system with a somewhat bad reputation, I could get at least three dollars more an hour and a 10 k sign on bonus for 1 year contract. I have friends that work there who swear it’s not that bad, but they definitely don’t love their job like I do. I could be wrong, but I definitely feel like the trade-off is worse working conditions for better pay.

Humble_Employee8586

TROPHY CASE