Remember when being a nurse was all so fresh and novel? Remember when your scrubs felt too new and stiff, and your stethoscope seemed too shiny? Remember when your brain went blank, and you felt like you hadn’t learned a single thing in nursing school, and why did they think you could be a nurse, anyway? Were they lying when they told you that you’d passed the NCLEX? What, were they crazy to think that you could now be legitimately licensed to be responsible for patients’ very lives? Who did they think you were? A nurse?
Looking back on your novice nurse self can sometimes feel embarrassing in terms of how naïve you were, but it can also be the key to something else: renewed self-compassion and compassion for others.
When You Had Ten Thumbs
New career jitters are nothing new in any profession, including nursing. Those first days, weeks, and months of your very first nursing job can bring back other memories of your very first clinical rotation when you felt like you had ten thumbs and couldn’t even remember your name, let alone how to calculate a drip rate without the help of a computerized pump. Math for meds trauma, anyone?
Even when you’re a seasoned nurse, switching specialties — or even just switching to a new unit — can throw you into self-doubt. When we fall into self-doubt, our brains can shut down, and even the things we should know somehow inexplicably fall into some cognitive abyss of forgetfulness, leaving us to feel helpless and alone in our lack of clinical confidence. It happens to the best of us, but it still feels crappy.
There’s value in connecting with the nurse you were when you clocked in for your first day on the job after passing the NCLEX and getting your license. That fresh-faced, petrified novice of a nurse was a previous iteration of your current nurse self, and the through line to them is never quite as far away as you might think.
Do you feel compassion for that nurse you were back then, or do you feel shame or pity? It wasn’t their fault they didn’t know much — no one graduates from nursing school knowing a whole heck of a lot in the larger scheme of things, and if there’s one thing your first job can teach you above all else is that you genuinely don’t know what you don’t know.
If you don’t feel compassion towards that squeaky new nurse with the equally squeaky new sneakers or clogs, it’s never too late to look back and say, “Yup, I was new, I learned a lot, and look at me now; I redeemed myself, and I became the nurse I always wanted to be, even if I did start with ten thumbs.”
Training Wheels are Universal
The fact is, we’re all beginners at something throughout our lives. Whether new to marriage, having our first child, buying our first home, or starting an IV, we’re given multiple opportunities to ride with training wheels.
When you see a new nurse struggling with that pesky new IV pump, do you let them sink or swim or lean in and ask if they need help? When you’re faced with a novel patient situation and don’t know how to approach it, do you beat yourself up for not knowing, or do you ask the nurse educator for support?
No one is infallible, and no one has a monopoly on knowing. And when we don’t know, we must recognize our fallibility and show ourselves well-deserved compassion. Is the new nurse struggling with that pump? That was you years ago. That patient facing a new diagnosis and feeling lost in their ignorance? They could be your mother or your father.
The state of not knowing is a universal human condition, and no matter how one’s ignorance manifests, compassion is the best response. Your novice nurse self can be an archetype you carry with you in your heart, an example of when you were green, ignorant, scared out of your wits, and perhaps feeling just a little bit like an incompetent impostor. This archetype can remind you of what it’s like to feel ignorant or inexperienced and consequently bring out your sense of self-compassion. And when you’re in touch with your self-compassion, compassion for others is close at hand.
You’re a nurse and likely a darn good one. But you were once all thumbs and completely unsure of yourself. Keep that novice nurse self on call, and they will serve you when you need a dose of humility and a reminder that we’re all just beginners. We can’t ever know it all, and we can be kind when we — or anyone else – demonstrate our lack of knowledge or experience. Training wheels aren’t forever, but the potential for compassion for yourself and others in the face of being a beginner most certainly can be.
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