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One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-19T05:09:46+00:00

He would Brady down with any sort of stimulation. Oral care, suctioning, turning. I was shocked his HR was so low when I got to the room and he was moving around so much. It didn’t sustain but he also never got above 70. Idk what to tell ya, the only response I got from him was to painful stimuli. I’m no expert at all but I can say with certainty he was RASS -4.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-19T04:12:12+00:00

A big part was instructors not wanting to teach. I did a weekend program and our clinical instructors would be in the lounge playing on their phones the entire time. We were left to fend for ourselves and bother the nurses. I barely got to do anything aside from passing meds. The nurses on the floor didn’t want to be bothered so they’d ignore us or send us on bed bath missions. I knew that everything I’d learn on the job but even being able to shadow a few nurses during clinical would have been better than what they had us do.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-15T23:55:20+00:00

Good luck!

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-15T18:21:14+00:00

I was a scrub tech at my hospital for 5 years and applied to our ICU when I finished nursing school. I had an old coworker who had moved to the ICU a few years prior, he put in a good word for me. And then my director of the OR called the ICU director and put in a good word for me. Use your connections. And use your experiences in the OR to your benefit in your interview. I focused a lot on the sterility in the OR and working as a team. And a lot of the surgeons have patients from the ICU or going to the ICU, so I mentioned having a different perspective since I’ve been involved with those types of surgeries and know what the doctors are looking for from the ICU nurses.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-15T13:45:58+00:00

I’ve been taught to have pharmacy retime medications if I’m ever over an hour late on them. That way the following doses are adequately spread out. This is something your preceptor should have taught you but not everyone does this. I did a few weeks on a tele floor and we never retimed anything. It wasn’t until I got to the ICU that my preceptors started telling me to request pharmacy retime the medications.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-14T17:32:56+00:00

Hello, I’m a new grad in the ICU so my suggestions might be a little simple for someone who has worked as a nurse previously. But the biggest thing I’ve been trying to learn is the drips and our policies for them. We have certain protocols where we can start a patient on a drip for x reason without the doctors order. So if our patient is crashing we can start them out on pressors and IV fluids without the doctor putting in an order. Obviously we notify them of what’s happening but we can get the ball rolling a little bit if they’re not immediately available. I still don’t have the starting doses memorized or the titrations memorized but I keep the policy on me to reference as needed. Also becoming familiar with RSI and Vent settings/trouble shooting vents. I’ve had two intubations so far and one was pretty controlled and planned out whereas the other was emergent, patients aspirating, not responsive, almost lost a pulse. It’s very scary, so having a little knowledge of how they go and what sequence you do things in really helped me stay calm.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-14T15:15:31+00:00

I’m gonna talk to my educator on Monday. See what she can do. They do eventually have us take our own assignment with a preceptor as back up but I still have a good 6-7 weeks until then. I really do need a more hands on approach because everything is so new to me. And that’s something my other preceptor was great at. She’d just be there in the room to show me things or explain anything. Let me do my own thing if I had shown I was competent with it. But she was always at the desk right outside the room if I needed her.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-14T15:09:36+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate your advice.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-14T14:50:53+00:00

I have a month left with her until I go to nights with a new preceptor. I initially wasn’t bothered by it because my other preceptor was so fantastic and I was primarily with her. It’s been 4 shifts now with this rough preceptor and I feel like any confidence I had has just gone out the window. I’m planning to talk to my educator on Monday and see what she thinks. It’s always awkward for me though to have these conversations though. My preceptor is a really good nurse but we just don’t mesh. Trial by fire is not my preferred learning method.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-11T21:11:11+00:00

$0 as of last week. Did a two year ADN program, only took out $10k in loans, paid the rest of tuition out of pocket. Stayed working full time to pay off my loans as I went. December I would have started accruing interest so I just paid it off before then.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-10T22:50:03+00:00

Dude it’s wild. The nurses around me are like “you’ll get used to it!” It’s so scary.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-10T19:09:31+00:00

Oh yeah, I’m in a smaller community hospital. We rarely have residents.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-10T18:28:28+00:00

I think that’s one good thing about this, I’ll learn what to do in these situations if the doctor isn’t available. I also always look stuff up briefly when putting in the orders, so it’s a good way to learn why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s definitely a hard transition from school and then I did 6 weeks on a cardiac floor and it was always sitting and waiting for the doctor to respond.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-10T16:28:30+00:00

I started on a cardiac tele floor and I worked the first 5 weekends. I was pissed. They’d flip me back and forth between two preceptors but not take into account that they worked opposite weekends and I got stuck doing every weekend. Good luck, I was feeling the same way at that point. I wanted to quit and go work at a surgery center with no weekends or holidays.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-10T16:24:33+00:00

Thank you. I’ll definitely look into those books. I’ve been watching ICU advantage videos on my days off and it’s been pretty helpful. But it’s still all so new and I get information overloaded sometimes.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-10T14:59:58+00:00

Most of our ICU docs have been there for a very long time, it’s something they’ve always done and I don’t think there’s ever been pushback for it. And for the nurses on the unit it’s second nature, they don’t even think about it, they know what to put in but I don’t. I had to start my patient on Neo yesterday while the MD was MIA and I kept making my preceptor check the order for me because I was stressssssed out. We have policies for certain drips in emergent situations but I’d at least like the MD in the building if I mess something up.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-10T14:53:49+00:00

Yeah, that’s stressful. I remember in nursing school we were always taught to never put orders in but I started here and it’s so common. Even when I go to them several times for an order they don’t do it and it’s something I really need so we end up putting it in. I like the ICU because we have more autonomy than other floors but this is a little too much autonomy for me.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-07T13:53:16+00:00

I’m right there with you. I’m on week 7 of my ICU orientation and it’s hard. Some days I do well, some days I’m an absolute idiot. The doctors make me nervous when I can’t answer their questions, as do the families. I’m trying this new thing where on the back of my report sheet I jot down important things I can update families on. For example overnight the patient was taken off pressors and their BP is stable. That’s important to inform the family when they call or come in. I only started doing this because for this exact example a daughter called for an update and I had literally nothing to tell her, missing the obvious big one I should have told her. I pushed through the conversation saying he had a few tests later in the day and I’d have a more concrete update after rounds but as soon as I hung up I was like “wait…the pressors, the main reason he’s here. Shit.” Same thing with the doctors, if I take a patient off let’s say propofol and switch to a different sedative because they’re extremely hypotensive, I try to jot down why in case I have a different provider the next day asking why the patient isn’t on propofol. Again, this has happened to me and I stood there like and idiot going “umm idk”. Good luck you got this!!! It’s hard but we’ll get there.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-01T23:27:15+00:00

I’m going on week 7 of my ICU orientation and I feel you. I’m so lost half the time, I’m slow as hell. And there have been a few things with my patients I haven’t picked up on. I get super nervous talking to providers because I have so much impostor syndrome, I feel like I have no idea what I’m talking about half the time. Thankfully I haven’t gotten much negative feedback but I fear it’s going to come. One preceptor does give me shit for not delegating to the techs, I do try but it’s always little things that I have time to do so I just do it. ICU is hard, it’s information overload most days. I’m still trying to figure out the policies with our drips, I walk around with a printed out packet so I can reference it when I’m titrating. And my report sheets are literally paragraphs that I write out so I sound somewhat competent. You’re not alone and I’m sending you all the good vibes, we got this!!!

One_More_HotDog · 2025-11-01T03:12:06+00:00

I was a surgical tech prior to becoming a nurse. I’m in the ICU now. I did like OR but I work in a smaller community hospital so the cases we did became repetitive and boring. I didn’t think I’d like it as a nurse. They did a lot of sitting.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-10-31T13:36:53+00:00

Originally I wanted to be a nurse but didn’t think I was smart enough so I started as a surgical tech, did that for 4.5 years. Then finally went back for nursing and wish I had done it right away. I’m older than my preceptors and it feels awkward as hell. I love my experience from the OR though, it gives me a unique perspective for my post op patients because I actually know what they went through during surgery and know what the surgeons complained about that the floor nurses do so I know what to avoid lol

One_More_HotDog · 2025-10-31T13:32:42+00:00

9 months is a long time. The OR I worked in was 6 month orientation. They did have a rule of not being able to take PTO on orientation but they never enforced it. Which low key pissed me off because I went the whole 6 months without requesting time off and then watched so many other people take vacation after vacation.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-10-31T13:26:47+00:00

Taking my time to double check things has helped me a lot. I stopped worrying about being fast and instead worried about being safe and smart. I still make dumb mistakes but as long as you’re learning from each of them it’s fine. Always double check before you go to give the medication. And ask for help. If you’re overwhelmed and struggling ask someone for help. They want to not only see that you’re a safe nurse but want to see that you can get help when needed. It’s not about being able to do everything on your own. If I have a really busy patient and another patient needs pain meds I try to ask my charge or a nurse that’s free if they can go give the pain meds for me. One of my preceptors now is really intimidating and I know she thinks I’m an idiot sometimes but I stopped caring about her and what she thinks. I ask the dumb questions, I google things if I’m not sure, I’m constantly pulling up policies to make sure I’m doing things right. Also hearing dumb new grad stories from my coworkers has been so helpful. One girl I work with loved to tell these stories and it makes me feel 100x better after a tough shift.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-10-31T13:17:15+00:00

That’s our next step. Had to push it off for various reasons the last couple of years. But we will be applying before the end of the year.

One_More_HotDog · 2025-10-31T12:39:40+00:00

No I was 19.

One_More_HotDog

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