This past year, I was a nurse practitioner in Austin, Texas. With that experience, I was responsible for seeing patients on a semi-permanent basis. I traveled to the far corners of the country for several weeks at a time, and I traveled to New York City for a few days at a time. My coworkers and I loved the excitement of seeing new places, but it was a job that also brought a few new challenges.
I don’t want to be the stereotypical stereotype of a nurse that takes a long time to travel, work, and see patients. However, I did have to learn to deal with the fact that I had to be a lot more alert to my surroundings than a traditional, “stay at home” type of nurse.
Like I said, I’m in the “far corners of the country” business. I’ve been an ER doctor for almost 20 years and I’ve seen a lot of different doctor’s offices. But every once in a while I’d have to travel in a different part of the country because my primary duty was to be on call 24/7.
A lot of us in the health care field work in different facilities and have to be able to go to different hospitals to do different jobs. That means having to be more aware of the places and patients we’re in. The same is true for nurses. We have to be aware of other nurses in the same facility and have to be able to tell if they’re going to be working or not.
When I first started in nursing, I knew that I had to be aware of other nurses. I knew they might think I was weird for not being the same nurse that I had been for as long as I had been a nurse. But it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t about wanting to be the same person I was before. It was about my needs. I needed to be aware of the nurses that I was going to work with during my rotation.
Working with nurses, especially newbies, is a challenge. The first few days are all about setting the tone. I need to know what the nurses want, what kind of nurse they are, and what would be my expectations. If I see a nurse that I like, I will usually be the first one in line to give them a hug, and I will often be the first one to ask for something.
The key point is that I can’t tell if the nurse I’m working with is just interested in the job, or if they really want to work with me. In order to work with a newbie, you often need to take out some of your own prejudices, which means that you have to set some expectations for yourself. I’m not saying that you have to be the best nurse you can be, but be aware that you have to have some expectations.
When I was a newbie to the industry, I had to take the time to become an expert at the job. I had to put a lot of time and effort into learning the ropes. I was required to perform at a level that was beyond my years, and I had to be willing to accept some of the mistakes that I made in order to be a good employee. You also need to be willing to accept someone else doing your job.
And these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If you have great credentials, great experience, and great attitude, it does not mean that they are also the best thing you can do. I worked at another hospital for a while. When I was a newbie, one of the hospital’s first nurses was the nicest lady you would ever want to work in an ER. She was also the most abrasive, arrogant, and pushy.
She was a nurse first travel agency. I was the one who was trying to make it work. I had a lot of experience and a lot of confidence, so I thought I’d take the job. It didn’t take too much convincing for her to switch her job to the travel agency and the first nurse job was over.
