As a brand new nurse on the scene, one of the things you have to realize is that now is when the learning really begins. Much of what you learned through nursing school was either through observation, reading, application on mannequins or some real life experiences where you practiced on a human being.
However, the thing about learning and keeping a new skill is that it needs to be practiced and it needs to be learned correctly from the beginning through smart application. Here are three mistakes nurses often make when it comes to learning a new skill.
Not Asking For Help
This is probably one of the most common mistake nurses make which I can completely understand. You’re new, you do not want people to see you as the “new nurse” or come off as incompetent so because of this you are afraid to ask for help. However not asking for help actually puts you at risk for two things.
One - it will take you longer to learn that skill because now, instead of someone telling you exactly how it is to be done, you’re going through test trials trying to figure it out yourself.
Two - you could potentially be putting your patient at risk.
Let’s say for example, you are learning how to start an IV. If you go up to your patient and the last time you remember you started an IV on your own, was in nursing school, in front of your clinical instructor and then now, you are going to attempt to do this on your poor patient, you’re setting yourself up to not do well. And as result, you ended up poking them three times with no success; that patient is going to be very upset with you. However, if you had asked for help from the beginning, you could have not only avoided upsetting the patient but also learned how to do it correctly again.
Skipping Steps
It’s very vital that you follow every single step when you are learning a new skill. It is absolutely encouraged that you go back to your nursing books and review all the steps again of how to do specific skills. For example, inserting a foley cather, the night before you go into work, you can go into your nursing books and read the step by step instructions for insertion. When you are around experienced nurses, it’s very easy to want to also cut corners but don’t. Learn how to do it correctly from the beginning so that way you do not risk hurting your patient later.
Not Understanding Why
You need to know what you are doing of course but you absolutely need to understand why you are doing it. This is also a strong component of learning a new skill. Think back to learning how to start an IV example. If you don’t really understand why your patient needs the IV, nor what the catheter is actually doing for them physiologically when you insert it, then it’s going to be harder for you to do the skill proficiently. You’re going to always be thinking about memorizing the steps but without understanding the purpose of the skill. It’s important to know the why just as much as you know the what.
While it has always been expected of us to not minimize the amount of mistakes we make, please do not forget that we are humans and we do still make an occasional mistake. By avoiding the three common mistakes listed above, we can certainly become more of a nurse we imagine ourselves to be.
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