New Nurse Tips: Owning Your First Year As A Nurse

Your first year as a new nurse can be super exciting and overwhelming all at the same time. Read these new nurse tips and learn how you can own your first year as a nurse. Take control and be empowered – find the power to make this your most amazing year yet.

Own Your First Year as A Nurse – 6 New Nurse Tips

Your first year as a new nurse can feel scary and make you question why you even did this. Be prepared to feel like you don’t know as much as you thought you did.

But as stressful and humiliating as that first year can be, it’s the best year for amazing personal and professional growth.

If you know what this first year will be like, you can prepare for something amazing. All your failures are actually just discovering the ways that don’t work. You will learn so much about yourself – how you function and what your strengths really are.

These 6 tips will empower you to make this first-year one you will look back at with pride.

1. Find a Mentor

First, you need to find a mentor. You need someone that you can go to with your questions because you will have a ton of them. This mentor will ideally be someone that either works in the same field you do, or works in the field that you hope to get into one day.

How do you find a mentor? There are lots of nursing groups online. But another excellent way is to talk to people at work and let them know you are looking for a mentor. Be honest, there is usually going to be someone that is interested in being that go-to person.

Admitting that you will have a bunch of questions is an excellent way to prevent yourself from feeling unneeded self-doubt. It’s ok to ask questions. In fact, it shows you are trying to learn and improve. Be sure to check out these benefits of mentorship in nursing.

2. Discover How You Cope With Stress

Next, you have to take control and own how you cope with stress. Are you emotional? Do you need to remember to breathe?

Learn about the healthy coping mechanisms that will help you thrive as a nurse. This is one of the most important things that will help you blossom in your first year. Don’t be a victim of your exhaustion and anxiety. Be proactive and understand yourself completely so you can learn self-control and succeed in high-stress situations.

3. Surround Yourself With Support

As a new nurse, you need all the support you can get. Create friendships with nurses you work with. If that isn’t possible, then join a nursing group online.

What you need is to be surrounded with people that understand how you feel and will give you advice that will help your career.

As nurses, we experience different kinds of stress and emotions on the job than other careers. Not only are we hearing about our incompetence from physicians but family members of patients might be disrespectful too. It’s enough to question your value.

Before you question yourself, glean some confidence from your support system.

4. Always Keep Learning

Another tip that will help you own your first year as a nurse is to always keep learning. Go beyond the required continuing ed courses and take courses on your own. All the knowledge you can learn will make you a stronger nurse.

Kati Kleber, MSN RN CCRN-K, has a New Nurse Mastery Course. All new nurses need to take this online course. Kati describes it best:

I created the New Nurse Master Class to guide you through your first year from one nurse to another. Drawing from my own experience in cardiac med-surg, stepdown, and neurocritical care, I address all of the new nurse pain points together with a panel of contributors. A nurse practitioner, therapist, physical therapist, nursing director, and flight nurse pursuing his MBA all join me in addressing your top concerns.

It has videos, downloads, and text, all super valuable and will help you learn about charting, navigating the hierarchy, and more! Plus you will earn 20.0 Continuing Education Hours for completing this course. Go take this class today. Priced normally at $297, this class is on sale for $197 until August 2nd only.

5. Get to Work Early

You will be shocked at how just getting to work a little bit early will make a huge difference in how prepared you are. You’ll have time to center yourself and prepare for the business of the floor. You’ll also be able to make sure you are organized and can be ready for the charting and shift-changes.

6. Create An Organization System That Works For You

Finally, to own your first year as a nurse, create an organization system that works for you. Do you love alerts from your phone? Or do you prefer a paper planner?

Creating a system that clicks with the way your brain processes information will set you up for success. You’ll be able to focus on completing tasks instead of wasting time trying to figure out what those tasks are.

Make The First Year As A Nurse Rock

Sure being a new nurse is nothing like anything you ever experienced before. But this is a wonderful thing! You will grow as a person in ways you never have before.

Just follow these tips and you can make your first year as a nurse an amazing one! Surround yourself with support and do everything you can to keep learning.