Magic is for real

I have always believed the ER is not the place for brand new nurses to try out their wings.  Too stressful.  Way too much to learn.  Sets them up for failure.  Better to have some med-sug experience under their belt before jumping in the frying pain with both feet AND their hair on fire.

All of the new grad nurses who have started out in my  ER are on their 2nd or 3rd health-care related career.  Some have been paramedics who have gone on to nursing school.  Some are EMT's, or paramedics, LNA's, and a handful of unit coordinators who have done that job while in school.  These here are the Sacred Cows with varying levels of knowledge, hands-on training of some kind, skills not necessarily achieved in nursing school.  The "have to hires", their orientation is very, very long,  and includes months of training wheels.  It's  really an extra six months of nursing education, as they are nurtured, supported, mentored, watched, encouraged, allowed to take baby steps until they are fully mobile, upright, standing-on-their-own-two-feet nurses.  They are not merely loosely supervised and used as additional staff.  Some do well, some do well eventually.

Every once in a blue moon, though, there comes one new nurse so rare, so extraordinary you wonder if they have been reincarnated from a previous nursing existence.  The total package, equally comfortable with the providers, nurse colleagues, and patients.  Confident.  Makes good decisions and, most importantly, asks great questions.  Takes great care of patients.

It has been about 16 years since I recognized a brand new nurse with such excellence.  She was an EMT, then  paramedic, to RN.  Got her BSN, MSN and is now working on her PhD in nursing.  She was a great nurse right out of the box.

Now, in my department, I have met such a Unicorn.  Marvel at the beauty.