Chloe is a newly qualified RMN. In her YouTube video, she shares the experiences she's had since qualifying!
Hello guys and welcome back to my channel!
My name is Chloe if you are new here, and if you are I would love you to hit that bright red subscribe button down below and of course if you enjoyed the video don't forget to give it a big thumbs up.
So today I have got for you another video in collaboration with Nurses.co.uk, all their information is linked down below but essentially they are a careers website built for nurses, by nurses.
They also have a blog with loads of fab resources on it, even if you're not at the stage of your training where you're looking for a job or if you're a student nurse, I definitely recommend checking out their blog because there's loads of fab resources on that.
So today I thought I'd do a bit of kind of like a story time video essentially because I want to talk to you guys about my experience of being a newly qualified nurse.
For anyone who's new around here, I graduated as a mental health nurse this summer and I started my job on September 17th so I've been working as a qualified nurse for nearly three months now which is just mad.
I actually could not believe how quickly that time has gone.
I genuinely feel like I only started last week and let me tell you that first day on the ward I absolutely terrified, like I don't even think the word terrified covers it!
I don't think I've ever been that afraid in my life.
The transition from student to qualified was... weird
It was such a weird experience to go into reception and be like ‘oh hi I'm Chloe I'm the new staff nurse’ and then again you know you walk onto the ward and people are introducing you as a staff nurse.
I actually had to stop myself because on a couple of occasions I would be like ‘oh hi I'm Chloe I'm the new student nurse’ and I'd have to stop myself and be like’ no Chloe, you’re not a student anymore you've qualified, this is your job’!
When I spoke to some of the other nurses on the ward they said they did the exact same thing, that they kept accidentally introducing themselves as a student nurse and then they'd be like ‘oh wait no I'm not’.
Or sometimes when people ring like Pharmacy does, every time Pharmacy rings they ask ‘am i speaking to a nurse?’ and the amount of times I've had to stop myself being like ‘nope I'm a student nurse but can I help’ and actually being like ‘yes, yes I am a nurse’!
It's just a really weird thing because for three years you've been telling everyone you're a student nurse, you've been introducing yourself as a student nurse and you are kind of used to what you're allowed and not allowed to do as a student. So to suddenly have this entirely new role, a new title, new things that I'm allowed to do... it was just it was a really really weird experience.
I'm learning more now than when I was a student
I very much felt like I knew how to be a student nurse but I didn't really know if I knew how to be a nurse and to be honest with you I feel like I've learned more in these last three months than I did my entire three years of training.
But the best bit is employers expect that.
My friends, my colleagues, people that I've spoken to about, it they've all said the same that when you start as a newly qualified nurse people kind of expect you to know nothing and anything you do know is a bonus rather than them being like ‘oh great you're a new nurse off you go get to it’.
The reality is a lot of people might go into jobs but they've never actually had a placement in that area so though you can kind of do a lot of research you're not really gonna know how that area works until you get there.
In my case I trained in London and then I moved up here to Manchester so even though I knew how my trust works I was now coming into a completely different trust where you know procedures are different and who you call to deal with certain situations is different.
So for me the biggest relief was that my employers didn't expect anything of me and every time people went to do something within my first few weeks of being there people were like ‘have you ever done this before’ ‘do you want to come and watch me’ .
For those first couple of weeks we’re kind of still very much felt like a student because people were you know showing me how to do things, double-checking I understood something before allowing me to go up and do it on my own, which actually was a massive relief for me because it was my biggest fear that I was gonna walk onto a ward on my first day and they were gonna be like ‘oh you're a nurse, here's the meds, keys, go do morning meds’.
So actually the relief I felt to know that you know people kind of expect that as a newly qualified nurse, you're not gonna know everything because you know you could be qualified 20 years and still not know everything.
You could have worked in one place for five years but then go and start somewhere else and you're still gonna need a little bit of support to work out how that ward works, how that trust works, how certain things are done in that environment.
So for me as a newly qualified nurse I've actually felt really supported.
Unfortunately that isn't gonna be everyone's experience.
Some wards are gonna be better than others.
Generally I'd say that I felt really supported and actually even now after three months situations are still coming up where it's like ‘who do I ring’ things like and nobody's judging me because I don't know everything.
About this contributor
Registered Mental Health Nurse
I qualified as a Mental Health Nurse (RMN) in August of 2018 and started as a newly qualified nurse shortly after. On top of nursing I juggle creating content for both my YouTube channel and blog.
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