The nurse should stop self dought, as is something that most people have to contend with from time to time. It’s that little voice inside your head that tells you you’re making a mistake or that you’re not good enough. It tells you that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing because you just don’t know enough. This voice can cause a lot of damage; even those who have a large number of excellent qualifications and plenty of experience can fall foul of it.
As a nurse, you need to know how to silence this voice as quickly and simply as possible. Your job is to help other people, and you can’t do that effectively when you are doubting how good you are at your job or questioning whether or not you should be doing what you’re doing in the first place.
It’s hard to stop doubting yourself, but it is possible, and here are some ways that nurses can do it.
You’re Not Alone
When you know you want to be a nurse, you’ll know what courses to study and what kind of personality traits you need to work on to be the best you can possibly be. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve known for as long as you can remember that nursing is the right job for you, or whether you decide later in life that you want to change your career path and do something new. If you want to do it, there are plenty of options open to you, but you need to believe in yourself first. The nurse should stop self dought because any self-doubt at this stage might prevent you from becoming a nurse altogether.
You might be feeling overwhelmed or scared, and you might wonder how you will ever learn everything you have to learn. The key to remember here is that everyone who is starting their nursing career feels the same. They are all going in with the same lack of knowledge and the same worries. You are not alone, and you never have to be. Talk to others, and you’ll soon see that you’re just like them. This should help you to quell those self-doubts and carry on.
Keep Learning
Self-doubt can quickly creep in when we’re not aware of it, but once it’s there, it’s hard to shake off. One way to prevent it from ever making an appearance at all is to continue to learn throughout your career. The more you learn and the more up to date you are with all the many changes that the medical profession goes through, and nursing, in particular, the more confident you can be that you are giving your patients the very best care possible.
Don’t worry that you’ll have to stop nursing to go back to school or that you’ll need to dedicate a certain amount of time in the evenings to attend night classes. You can learn online and complete a lot of different nursing programs, including working for DNP nursing leadership courses so that you can prove your skills and dedication.
The more you know, the more confident you will be, and this will stop self-doubt from being able to cause any problems. Not only that, but when you learn online, you can do so at your own pace and in your own time, so you won’t have to sacrifice anything to get ahead in your career.
Choose the Right Area of Nursing
Self-doubt occurs when we allow ourselves to start questioning whether what we’re doing is the right thing. There are a number of reasons why this might happen, such as making a mistake at work, overhearing something that is said, a patient making a complaint, or not quite being able to understand a new way of doing things. These, and other situations, might make you think you can’t really do what you’re doing and that you’re not good enough. That feeling is all about emotion, of course, and doesn’t pertain to reality, but it causes a lot of problems nonetheless.
Another reason to feel self-doubt is if you’re not working in the nursing area you’re most interested in. If you’re not using your skills and knowledge doing what you want to do, you might feel out of place, unsure that you’ve made the right decision, and generally unhappy with your life.
Make sure as a nurse should stop self dought you look around at the different ways you can be a nurse if you’re feeling like this. It might be that you would be better in a different department. If the ER is too hectic, perhaps senior care would work better for you. If you want to try surgery, that is another option, and so too is taking your nursing skills out of the hospital to work in social care or visiting patients in their home. There are dozens of different options, so the nurse should stop self dought stems from not doing what you would be happiest doing, it’s time to make a change.
Know That Mistakes Happen
Everyone makes mistakes in their work, even those with a huge amount of experience and learning. We are all human, and no one is perfect. If you make a mistake, it can knock your confidence and be the ideal way for self-doubt to enter your life. This can then make you afraid to try anything just in case you make another mistake.
Knowing that mistakes happen and that they can happen to anyone should help you to feel better. Of course, you’ll still need to make up for whatever happened if you can, but you’ll also have learned a valuable lesson, and when you realize how much you have gained, your self-doubt should go away.
Remember Your Reason
Everyone will have had a reason for becoming a nurse. Those reasons can range from feeling a calling to the profession because you want to help people, following in a parents’ footsteps, learning about the job of nursing at school and finding it fascinating, and much more.
Your reason is, in many cases, not just why you started nursing but why you should continue. Wanting to help people, wanting to do something worthwhile, and so on will give you the momentum you need to continue.
If your reasons were about making money, finding any job just to get you started, trying to make other people look up to you, and more in this vein, you might not get on so well. That’s not a problem either. There are many other things you can do in life, and as long as you are happy and know you’re doing the right thing, self-doubt won’t cause you a problem. If you’re feeling it, perhaps it’s time to reassess.
