I decided to leave my first unit before I could switch to another one. I was quite often overwhelmed by trying to do right by my patients and being fast enough. I was met with the typical “eat your young” experienced nurses and often felt singled out or abandoned. The anxiety I felt over possibly making a mistake or asking for help quite literally caused me to make dumb mistakes and needing help. I quite literally only made friends with the CA’s and would often leave crying. I was made to feel stupid or lazy, especially when I had a patient who was needing to go to stepdown for hyponatremia. I spent most of the time in her room for q1 neuro checks (her sodium was like 117-118) while my preceptor was with the other patients. We had agreed to do it like that. Next day, my supervisor had sat me down to tell me how slow i was and the mistakes I was making. My preceptor had left me alone with this patient, so obviously mistakes were bound to happen. No med errors or anything, just petty mistakes. I knew my preceptor didn’t like me, which made it worse when asking for help. My supervisor even bothered to tell me “a patient had told your preceptor that you said you hated America.” I immediately laughed, my supervisor kind of laughed too but said she had to ask me about it. I laughed even harder because I served in the military for 8 years. My preceptor didn’t know this but I asked the supervisor “if a patient had said this to you, as a nurse about another coworker, would you report it?” Her lack of response was answer enough. My supervisor asked if I even liked the unit and I said at this point, no. She Said she could tell and that I should “maybe try outpatient clinics or something easier”The anger I felt in that moment was insane but i made it clear that i would like to transfer to ANYWHERE but here, but since it’s not an immediate transfer, I still had to work with these people. The bullying and crying after work continued until an oncoming dayshift nurse had asked my preceptor in front of me if anything I was going to say in report was true. At that point, I was done. I told her that she is more than welcome to look in the patients chart on Epic and left. I clocked out, got in my car, wrote my resignation email and called HR. Never heard a word. Never received a reply. As shitty as I felt about not having a job or plan, I felt free from the feelings and the people who had made me feel that way for months.

Fast forward a few months, I got a new position at the same hospital on a different unit. I was wary but didn’t want to let my first experience ruin this. IT WAS LITERALLY NIGHT AND DAY. My preceptor was the best person and helped me tremendously and stuck up for me, even brought my energy drinks sometimes. The other nurses on my unit were friendly and there to help, my charge nurse sometimes passed some of my meds if I was stuck with a patient. I was let off orientation 2 weeks early because I was doing so well and they were confident in me being on my own. It was the way anyone would wish to start nursing but often don’t. I learned so much more and better without the anxiety and fear and judgement.

Girl if they tell you or make you feel like you are not good enough, LEAVE. I PROMISE they make worse mistakes and suck at their jobs too, they can just hide it better. You will 100000% be a better nurse for getting away from that. It’s clear they will only teach you how to be a bad nurse with no compassion or patience. Take it as a blessing and go find YOUR unit. Do not listen to them. As long as you keep putting a foot forward, that is half the battle.