Goals of a Nurse in Her 2nd Year
So Cheers to the future! My sights are on growing through my 2nd year with grace and patience.
Here are a few professional/personal goals for the months ahead:
1. Manage stress and anxiety with the resources provided to me. aka debriefing with a counselor on a regular basis. Life and death, kids. It's heavy shit.
2. Get my PCCN in the next 12-months. The progressive care certification seems like an appropriate first certification for me based on the population I work with now. Buuuuuut I'm also looking into a palliative care certification as a possible alternative.
3. Lose 50lbs so I feel better running my ass off on the unit. Ok, so 50lbs is an arbitrary number, but it's ballpark right. Nursing school left me with some horrible habits that I need to break, including getting off my arse on my days off.
4. Get nicer scrubs…the yoga pants ones sound comfy. I love the scrubs I have now, but my only complaint is I sometimes feel restricted by the baggy pajama-style scrub pants. I'm hard to fit, so this is gonna take some serious hunting. All stretchy scrub pant recommendations for short girls with booties are welcome.
5. Find my perfect lunch combo(s). I never wanna eat what I bring. Foods I love to snack on at home lose their luster when I'm on the clock. Stress is part of this, but also, I lack creativity and the drive to plan ahead with options that are both healthy and tasty.
6. Be healthy and keep good attendance at work. It’s been a rough year so far. Illness, migraines....products of the aforementioned high stress, poor sleep, ineffective self-care. The second half of the year calls for major improvements.
7. Get to know my co-workers better. We have a lot of new nurses swirling in and out of my teaching hospital all the time. People get advanced degrees and move up, others find their dream jobs elsewhere, or whatever. Great nurses leave and the process of team-building with newbies continues. I'm always cautious and unsure what to think of new people at first, but I'm delighted when someone I didn't hit it off with immediately turns out to be awesome. I try to keep an open heart.
8. Figure out my artistic contribution to my unit. I've unofficially taken responsibility for a third of a triptych bulletin board, but my efforts have been sporadic and unfocused. I have so many ideas just waiting for the energy to be spent on them.
9. Build stronger interdisciplinary relationships. Night shifters kinda do live in the shadows. We don't always have the familiarity with docs, social workers, and other members of the huge team. I gotta work that much harder to learn peoples' names and make them remember mine.
10. Join a committee. My bosses, I'm sure, are eager to see me do something like this. There are lots of committees to choose from. If I'm gonna stick to my genuine interests, I'll end up on a committee focusing on something like ergonomics or patient education. I love ergo machines and teaching patients how amazing they are.
There! Ten goals for my second year of nursing.
What are your goals for the rest of 2017? Talk to me in the comments; I always reply. Gimme a like and a share while you're at it.
Be well,
NurseDrizzles
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