15

THINGS THEY DON’TTEACH

YOU IN

SCHOOL

NURSING

You didn’t learn how you become someone more aware

of your environment, more sensitive to pain and care needs. Nursing becomes a

part of your overall personality and moves from

being just a job to your calling.

1. HOW NURSING CHANGES YOU

2.How To Give A Good Report

School did teach you the basics But it’s only when you hit the floor and learn

how to deliver the right message that you

understand. Giving a report effectively requires you to be alert, on the point and

confident.

3. To Keep Up Or Be Left Behind

Nurses are a busy lot and cannot make time to mollycoddle a new

recruit. You’ll have to hit the floor running and get

on with the job. If you don’t keep up with the

pace, you’ll be left behind

4. Good Time Management Skills

You have to manage a lot of duties. Managing patient

charts quickly and efficiently is a skill that nursing school

will not teach you. Only when you are a practicing nurse will you understand how to handle your tasks and responsibilities to get everything done on time.

5. How To Multitask And

PrioritizeLearning to multitask is part

of the job. You’ll have to comply with different

requests and manage to juggle them all efficiently. When you have multiple

patients you’ll have to learn to prioritize needs

6. How To Manage Your Stress

ProperlyHealthy methods of coping

stress are not taught in school. You’ll have to learn

how to cope with your stresses on the job and pick up pointers via research and your colleagues. Either you

learn to cope with your stresses burn out

7. How To Deal With Death

As a new nurse, you might tend to bond with certain

critically ill patients and not be prepared to watch them

die. It takes a great emotional toll out of any nurse. It’ll take you time to learn how to deal with death in a professional

and healthy manner.

8. How To Deal With Feelings

You’ll be exposed to all kinds of feelings in your nursing job. Feelings of joy, depression and excitement. You’ll make silly mistakes, you have

to work without any regard for your

personal feelings.

9. How To Deal With Doctors

School taught you many things but not how to

communicate with ill tempered doctors. Doctors as a rule

don’t have much patience with anyone who’s slow on the uptake. You’ll have to deal

with doctors who never sleep, hate their jobs and see you as

a nuisance.

10. Bleach Is Your Friend.

The likelihood of getting something nasty splashed on

your scrubs is directly proportional to the amount of

white you wear. If, you are required to wear a white coat as part of your uniform, you should buy stock in bleach

companies now. It'll subsidize your retirement.

11. Don’t Expect

Applause.You may not always be told if

you are doing a good job. Nurses usually work alone

with little or no supervision so don’t count on someone

patting you on the back if you’re doing a good job; if you still have a job, you must be

doing it good enough.

12. How To Look Things Up

Nursing school doesn’t teach you how to look things up. The truth is there’s just too much to learn in too little time. The rest needs to be

researched on the fly. Every nurse needs some way to do this. Too many nurses enter

the field expecting they should already know enough to thrive in the workplace.

Not true.

13.Nasty pressure ulcers

Those pictures you see in textbooks don’t do pressure ulcers justice. You’ll have to

use a variety of instruments and there’s

nothing quite like sticking six inches of q-tip into a

tunneling wound, or cleaning out infectious goo

using just bravery and a handful of saline flushes.

14. If you hate it, you can always do

something else.

If you don't feel like you're a fish finally dropped into water, you

don't need to be doing this for a living. It's too hard, and the

money's not as good as other professions. At any point in school

or in your career, you are certainly allowed to back out

and go be something else.

15. Be Proud!

Be proud of your nursing degree, but do not let initials define you never minimize

the nurse who has two years of schooling instead of four

listen completely and respectfully to everyone.

There will be a lot of great opportunities coming your

way. So keep your head high!

SHARE WITH US!

Do you know any other things Nursing school didn’t teach you?