You landed a nursing job! Congratulations! Now, you must make sure that you get the most our of your job orientation. This is your chance to gain the knowledge to either float or sink when it is time to fly on your own! Below are a few tips that will help you get the most out of your orientation.

• If your nursing preceptor/mentor is negative, lazy, incompetent, hateful, etc. PLEASE go to your nursing director/manager and request a new preceptor/mentor immediately! This is YOUR job orientation and it is imperative that you get the most out of it! Do not accept less!
• It may help to keep a journal of the things you are seeing and learning each day during orientation and post orientation. This may help you put the BIGGER picture together.
• Ask lots and lots of questions! Ask multiple nurses the same questions. Everyone has a different perspective. Don't forget to ask doctor's, physician assistant's and nurse practitioner's questions. They serve as a great resource with a wealth of knowledge (most of them will not hesitate to take the time to answer your questions).
• Sometimes you don't always have time during work hours to get the full answers you are looking for. If you have questions or would like more information about a specific disease process, procedure, etc. Write your question down and look it up at home that night.
• Subscribe to a nursing journal. Nursing journals are full of useful and up to date information.
• If your orientation is nearing an end and you truly do not feel prepared, share this with your nursing director and request more orientation time.

These tips not only apply to new graduate nurses, but to anyone starting a new nursing position. Congrats on your new position and good luck!

"Many nurses point to stress, lack of supervision, and poor on-the-job training as their reasons for leaving the field." Follow this link to read the rest of this article- http://www.newamerica.net/blog/new-health-dialogue/2009/quality-job-training-lowers-turnover-rate-nurses-10151

Nursing- to be or not to be? That is the question!

So you think you want to be a nurse? Thinking is always the first step. Hopefully you have started doing your research on what the word "nursing" entails and have a career path in mind. If not, you had better start working on it.

I have been a registered nurses for 13 years and when I made the decision to go to nursing school there were not many resources out there to help me make decisions. I was on a wing and a prayer and thankfully I attended a nursing school that helped me acheive my goals and enter into the wide open world of nursing. It is a constantly changing career path that has the opportunity to take you many places if you so desire.

With the invention of blogging and the internet we have the ability to research many sites and review the experiences of nursing students, new nurses, old nurses, and get a look into nursing careers all over the world. I encourage each and every person who is considering becoming a nurse to DO YOUR HOMEWORK.
Visit websites, research schools, research career paths, research companies, research student loan facilities and grant availability, research the good, the bad and the ugly. In other words RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH!!!!!!

One recommendation is to start out with a career path survey to see if your interests and talents reflect that of what is required in the nursing field. Some examples of these surveys can be found on sites like www.careerpath.com and www.myersbriggs.org. These sites have career path surveys that will help you distinguish your strengths and weaknessess and help you determine if nursing may be the correct path for you

A second recommendation is to sit down and write a brief summary of why at this moment you think you want to be a nurse. Just simply do a rough draft starting out with "I want to be a nurse because......" and see where this leads you. You will also eventually be able to use this in an essay that may be required by the nursing school you plan to attend to get accepted into a program. An example of nursing essays can be found at www.allfreeessays.com/topics/why-i-want-to-become-a-nurse so you can see how just writing a rough draft of why you think you want to be a nurse may be beneficial to you in the future.

There are many, many resources on the internet that can help you decide whether or not to make this career choice and help you decide what path to take. Our advice is simple: DO YOUR RESEARCH! You may find that your original plan can take you in 1,000 different directions!