Adaptation: New Nurses Need to Eat or be Eaten

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One thing that I learned quickly is that in times of crisis there’s no time for obsessing over details. As a new nurse, it’s hard to differentiate what tasks are top-tier priorities and what tasks can be pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.

The adaptations that I had to make as a new nurse more so involved the patient populations. Populations that we suddenly needed to start treating because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, the adaptation skills that I’ve learned from this experience can be carried with me in my nursing practice.

Nursing school didn’t include a lecture on being a nurse during a pandemic. No less, a pandemic that involves a novel virus that spreads like wildfire.

One big thing new nurses should quickly learn is what priority tasks aren’t actually a priority. Something that one of my charge nurses said to me recently has really stuck with me…

She told me “You only have 12 hours. You do what you can with your 12 hours, and if at the end of your day all of your patients are breathing and stable, you’ve done well.”

When I say “eat or be eaten” I mean learn what can and what cannot wait. It’s important that you learn to take control of your time during each shift, or else you will drown yourself trying to do everything and then some.

There will be some days that you go home feeling like you really were a great nurse for your patients. Other days, you might just feel like the crappiest nurse in the world. At the end of both of those days, you are still just human.

I have worked hard to adapt and keep up with the constant changes in this pandemic. All the while still solidifying the two years’ worth of nursing school knowledge that is sitting in my head.

Assessing for symptoms of a new virus and administering new trial medications to these patients has been, for a lack of a better word…stressful. But here I am, making it work and rolling with the punches.

My lesson learned here is: I can take my job seriously and also not take it so seriously and still be a great nurse.

I have saved myself many more days of stress headaches, stress eating, and borderline anxiety attacks by understanding this.

On the floor, I can either be my own worst enemy or my greatest ally. Just learning to adapt and work with myself through stressful days is something I’m still working on. I know that it will be something that I will continue to work on for years to come.