October 5, 2009

It's official, I'm an employee now

I did pretty well overall with orientation:  plenty of good feedback about my performance, lots of tips for improving myself, one med error d/t my not understanding a part of the MAR, and he only got half of his antibiotic dose.   It'll be kind of frightening flying on my own--really on my own this time, without the "orientee" safety net under me.  But I'm sure I'll be OK.  Just keep to the P&P, remember the 7 rights of medication administration, and yell for help before a crisis occurs and not during/after.

I need to work on creating a medication nurse cheat sheet, since that's what I'll probably be doing a lot of in the near future.  Then I'll make one for charge nursing.

I also got exposed to the office politics.  In my defense, the two nurses talking were sitting on either side of me at the station, so it's not as though I was creeping around corners and listening at closed doors.  But anyhow, I learned a few things about the place and some people, some good and some not so...of course, anything I heard I've taken with liberal doses of salt, as I prefer to find out more facts myself and make up my own mind about matters, instead of just going along with whatever I hear in passing.

I'm also intending to stay out of the politics as much as possible.  I'm really just there to be a nurse.