My First Year of NICU Nursing!

7 weeks in: almost done orientation!

Because I'm an experienced RN, I get 2 months of orientation. New grads get 3 months. It's kind of scary that I'm almost on my own, but tbh, I've been given the sickest kids on the unit at this point. I definitely need assistance doing certain tasks (which is normal) and besides trachs, I feel somewhat comfortable. I still don't know everything and haven't even been exposed to certain things I should, but I know if I run into these situations off orientation, there will be other nurses willing to help me. 

Most of my coworkers are so nice, but I also miss my old coworkers. I worked on a very small unit, so we were more tight-knit. I am going to my old unit's holiday party because they still invited me to come and I miss them :) 

Once I got a hang of the slightly different way NICUs do their care, I feel what I was doing before honestly wasn't that much different. It's just with extremely small patient (less than 1000 gram babies sometime) or babies that are just waiting for death. I feel like the NICU is more depressing tbh, and you can see how heartbroken the parents are. It isn't all cute baby clothes and small diapers lol. But it's nice to get this experience. The NICU is notoriously hard to get experience in because the nurses that are in it, are in NICUs for life usually. I'm excited to have this opportunity. But like I said, my journey may be cut short due to my desire to travel nurse. I have enough experience to travel nurse and I would be making SO much more money doing so. I also don't think working in hospitals is worth the pay I make, granted I actually make way more than I used to due to raises given during COVID. Still, travel nurses across the country are pulling like 10k a week. I don't even want to make that much because the contracts are usually stressful if you're making that much.

Unfortunately this week I had a preceptor that was a bully. Immediately she started cursing about how she didn't want to precept. She shoved her hand in my face and said "I don't want to precept you." Then she started yelling at me to do things faster. When I asked questions about machines I had never used before, she started saying "how have you been here for 7 weeks and never used this before?" It was horrible. And on top of it, she was telling me wrong information (telling me not to clean ports when I should, general practices when handling neonates, etc.) 

Luckily, there is an educator who checked in on me in the morning. I told her immediately I had concerns. And because other people witnessed her bullying me, they vouched me. Now this person is in huge trouble with her managers. They spoke to me to get all the details and they said they're going to talk to her. They said they're removing her as a preceptor for everyone and apologized that I went through this.

I was really triggered by this experience, because I experienced bullying from my preceptor at my first job. Luckily, I have job experience and know better than to take BS from people like this. I'm happy I spoke up for myself and I'm very happy that the higher-ups are doing something about it. I had a rough week because of this and lost a lot of confidence I had built for myself. I only have one more week of orientation and I hope I feel better. I want to be successful but I'm also scared and discouraged.

I hope next week is better! Seriously would be amazing if some nurses weren't bullies.

<3

Annie 💜