This morning I got to participate in one of my favorite events. It was the post-orientation evaluation of one of our newly hired nurses. She is a lovely young lady who is embracing the new challenges that our unit is bringing to her life. We covered the usual evaluation topics such as organizational skills, communication with colleagues and physicians, realistic expectations we have for her, goals for the next six months…those sorts of things. Then we blew her right out of the water I believe. Though not on purpose. We talked about self-care. We talked about how important it is to take care of yourself as you go about doing this work.
We told her that we expect her to rely on us for emotional support when a child dies, and to talk through it with us. That when something happens that is upsetting to her, no matter how small it may seem, we want to know about it. Our goal is always to retain our nurses. We need to know what is going through their minds. Helping them process things that come at them, and there are many things, is part of all of our jobs. Over the years we have found that what we thought were small things to us were really very big things in the minds of our “baby nurses”. We need to take care of them like they are our children in many ways. I think if they feel that, they will flourish in the growth of their practice.
One thing I am proud of in this unit is a post-orientation ritual we have that was started by a manager many years ago. In an effort to help those that support us outside our walls understand what we do, we like our new hires to bring whomever it is that is their support system in to the unit at the end of their orientation. That way, when we come home sad, quiet, angry, crying, or just not quite ourselves, it is our hope that they will have seen why that may be. When they see the critically ill or injured children, their devastated families, all of the technology that we must be highly adept at maneuvering, and all of the constant noise and interruptions, we think it really helps our loved ones understand. It is one thing to talk about your job. Seeing truly is believing. And it is vitally important that we take care of each other. It starts with taking care of yourself.
Tracy
To become a Registered Nurse at Clarian, visit Jobs for Registered Nurses.
We told her that we expect her to rely on us for emotional support when a child dies, and to talk through it with us. That when something happens that is upsetting to her, no matter how small it may seem, we want to know about it. Our goal is always to retain our nurses. We need to know what is going through their minds. Helping them process things that come at them, and there are many things, is part of all of our jobs. Over the years we have found that what we thought were small things to us were really very big things in the minds of our “baby nurses”. We need to take care of them like they are our children in many ways. I think if they feel that, they will flourish in the growth of their practice.
One thing I am proud of in this unit is a post-orientation ritual we have that was started by a manager many years ago. In an effort to help those that support us outside our walls understand what we do, we like our new hires to bring whomever it is that is their support system in to the unit at the end of their orientation. That way, when we come home sad, quiet, angry, crying, or just not quite ourselves, it is our hope that they will have seen why that may be. When they see the critically ill or injured children, their devastated families, all of the technology that we must be highly adept at maneuvering, and all of the constant noise and interruptions, we think it really helps our loved ones understand. It is one thing to talk about your job. Seeing truly is believing. And it is vitally important that we take care of each other. It starts with taking care of yourself.
Tracy
To become a Registered Nurse at Clarian, visit Jobs for Registered Nurses.
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