Doubting yourself as a nurse
When taking care of a patient recently, I was precepting some students. This student had gone over medications before walking into the room, checked all information and confirmed her knowledge.
She walked into the room, a patient and their spouse were in there. The pt asked what meds were to be given at this time. The student responded with the correct medications and what she had looked up before walking into the room. That’s when the spouse starting shouting at the student. The spouse had told this student that they were wrong, didn’t know what they were talking about or doing. Then this person said that next time the student should know what they are doing before they walk into the room and shouldn’t be doing such things if they don’t know.
The student left the room a bit dazed and confused at what had just happened. After all, she had looked up the information from a reliable source, confirmed it with a practicing RN and learned about it in her pharmacology course in school. She didn’t understand how she could be wrong with such basic pharmacological information.
I then told this student, “DONT EVER LET A PT OR THEIR FAMILY MAKE YOU DOUBT YOURSELF”. As nurses we tend to question what we know since our brains have had to absorb quite a lot in a short period of time and absorb even more in our workplace even quicker than we did in school. This was a great lesson for the student and experienced RN. We tend to question ourselves, whether or not someone else does it for us. But the lesson the students took from this was that, when in doubt, look it up, ask another RN and remind yourself you know more than you think.
