It's been 4 months since I have started working as an independent RN. No more instructors stalking me, no more too many people to report to, no more being controlled and judged by other nurses. It's been overwhelming, yet there is no doubt that the nursing world has been treating me nicely.
I got lucky. Working in 5 different units allowed me nice breaks from all the diaper changes, bums wiping, and many other odd things we do. I hate it. I hate how our surgical floors are bombarded by handicapped medical patients that don't belong there. I hate how us surgical nurses are doing medical work that we shouldn't be doing. I hate how much I hate being a medical nurse.
And now. Now that I got even luckier and got to jump into a full time line, I don't really know what to do with this kind of luck. I can't complain, I am one of the few that got into a full time position this quick after graduation. But I worry, I worry now that I am "stuck" at one unit, I will get sick and tired of it too soon. "It" may simply refer to the one unit, though I am afraid "It" might somewhere down the road mean "the real nursing world".
I remember when I was a student or when I first graduated, how excited I was to be a real nurse. But the last few months have taught me nursing really isn't what I expected it to be. I have limited autonomy in my practice, I have little control over my patient care, and I am given little credit for my knowledge and for what I know is right.
I want to give the best patient care possible, I want to be a nurse that does more than completing tasks, I want many other things to fulfill what I think is the ideal nursing role. Yet the longer I am in this real nursing world, the more I realize how far I am from possibly becoming that ideal nurse. No, I am not going to quit nursing right now. But if the future of my nursing career continues to be what it has been like in the last 4 months, I might become a statistic and drop out of nursing within 5 years of graduation.
Maybe I just need to specialize into areas with quicker patient turnover or areas that give me adrenaline rush. Maybe. I hope that's all I need.
