A Novice to Every Human

A Novice to Every Human

12 months gone by since my curly nest adorned in green marched into the doors of 550 1st Avenue. The heart pumping my five foot frame pounded its surrounding rib cage with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

They say it's rough being a new nurse and novice, but all beginnings are hard. I walked through those doors anticipating the adventures of both the hardships and the satisfaction that I planned to experience during my venture into the novice nurse role. Every day has been an adventure in another way.

The bumpy roads during those 12 months are what make this a journey rather than just a job. The shifts that extended into midnight carved my experiences into stepping stones for growth. As I sought out knowledge from the senior staff that I aspire to be like during my times of confusion and frustrations, I was molding my road for my future nursing journeys.

Every day was a journey between completing the required tasks and attempting to go beyond the required. There were some days that I felt like a real winner; patients walked, ate, passed flatus and were still breathing when I left; and a real win when I managed to document it all. The rare calm moments allowed for the simpler mundane luxuries of socializing with new friends, colleagues and sometimes patients; the sweetness of peanut butter and saltine food contests, and back of nursing station “selfies”. On those days I walked home lighthearted and in smiles.

    However, a typical day doesn't usually sanction such indulgences; days often trend on a domino series of disasters whether it be decompensating patients, upset family members, patients with frequent bowel explosions, understaffing and days spend with real special cases who liked to throw the food they didn't like in their exhausted RN's face. Those were the days that reinstated my confidence in my career decision; when all hell broke loose, when mealtime and breaks were skipped, bathroom privileges unfeasible yet an RN with body still somewhat intact and equipped to face the new disasters and challenges of the next 12 hour shift ahead.

 

The smooth days were happy days. The rough days sealed the feeling of content on the heart that chose a life of nursing.

My novice year had its ups and down.  Yet it was a meaningful year. It build the foundation for my lifetime of caring. I accumulated new knowledge and pasted some of the knowledge from my textbooks into real life scenarios. Over the months I managed to create a version of a routine for managing the day. Although each day the possibility of a vast disturbance of this meticulously scheduled routine is bound to erupt, yet each disaster is received and handled with a slightly elevated level of confidence and skill. Every single day I continue to face new challenges and exercise the various fragments of my brain to master those obstacles laid out before me. However, with each new challenge; it is faced with a slightly more confident and optimistic game face. Every new patient I meet and attempt to understand, challenges my game plans and forces me to re-strategize in order to accommodate their specific set of needs. Each new patient; a new human being with a whole new set of comorbidities and health needs; is a blunt reminder of my imperfections, yet a simultaneous reality check measures how much I do know.

With time you learn that a good nurse should always see themselves as a novice. A novice by Webster’s definition is; “a person new to or inexperienced in a field or situation”. Every human being we meet humbles us into the novice role when we must look at their individualized map of clinical circumstances. Each day on the unit I learn new things that help me be a better nurse. I gain knowledge as well as comfort and confidence in my work. Yet, that air of the “novice” mindset must continue to exist, for each person is new human being unlike the one previously. Each patient is a new body, a new set of genes, and a new life to consider. I must take my knowledge accumulated from other clinical scenarios and apply it to the new patients I come across, but that combined with a novice attitude that everyone is different and my clinical focus and care will never be the same for each person I encounter. I am a novice to each patient’s specific clinical needs, but with each patient and experience my care can be masked with a slightly elevated level of confidence in the work I perform.

During my Nurse Residency celebration following my year of completing my first year as nurse, I was astonishingly informed that all this time I wasn’t in fact a true “Novice”. A “Novice” nurse is more directly associated with a nursing student who is completely new to this environment. According to Benner’s model of nursing competence, I began my first year as an “Advanced Beginner”; A novice with a slightly more elevated level of confidence. I now unpretentiously accept my stage as an “Advanced Beginner” as I continue to work my up this competence ladder, as I accumulate further skills, continue to accumulate more of the infinite measures of available knowledge and ask questions during times of uncertainties.

And so my nursing journey continues; I hope to continue to rise in my level of nursing competence. I now venture in and reclaim my status as a student with a limited social life, as I embark on the next part of my nursing journey; graduate school. 

The title of my blog “my year as a Novice”, is only slightly outdated.  The year is up but I will continue to be a “Novice”. I will be a “Novice quite literally as I begin my graduate/nurse practitioner journey, as well as a “Novice” in attitude as I hope to continue to provide my care humbly, to each new individual, as a new experience, as a new clinical picture.