A Sunday night shift in a Nicu in south Brazil

Thank you so much for sharing your story!! You must be one heck of a nurse to manage what you managed, not to mention the skill your LPNs and CNAs must have had as well. One of the hardest things new grads face is either gaining enough confidence to do their jobs or having an over abundence of confidence and learning their limits. I'm glad you're here - and anyone that has a problem with your English, just ask them to speak with you in Portugese. You are bilingual, much more talented than me.

I can't imagine how you must have felt as a new grad having all that responsibility. It seems like so often things are thrust upon us that we are no where ready for. I was given 3 very ill patients to care for when first off orientation and I thought that was bad. Your situation was unreal. Did you have any LPN's or was it just CNA's working with you? Either way, the demands on you were horrendous. I think you must be one heck of a nurse and person. Forgive yourself for what happened to the child, you didn't cause it and it would have been impossible for you to have monitored everyone the way they needed monitoring that night. We are blessed to have you.Mahage

You are awesome! Everything happens for a reason. You did your very best. Credo! Voce parece Mulher Maravilha! Hey, if you have an account on orkut, please let me know. I lived in Brazil for a year when I was in high school. Feel free to contact me directly.Beijos,Chris

glad to hear you are in the US where there are better working conditions (better care for patients) than in brazil. please don't beat yourself up over a mistake any person could have made. you should not feel guilty. i hope you can move on and stop wondering "what if", because you did your best at that time. i wish you the best of luck thank you for the insight of being a new grad in brazil.

Thank you for sharing this. The nursing shortage may be bad here, but I have an idea that it is even worse in places like Brazil. Don't be too hard on yourself concerning what happened in that NICU in Brazil. You honestly did the best you could under the circumstances, and all who were involved were just that much more better off because you were there. In spite of all of the problems we have here in the U.S., we are still better off here in this country than in many other parts of the world. Your story helps put things in perspective.

I would like to thank you all for the words of incentive, I really appreciated! I wish all nurses who work in US had a chance to go somewhere else to in the world to really see how people are treated around the world. I feel sad sometimes when people here don't appreciate everything they have. I tried to learn from my experience, I believe it's the best thing to do when bad things happenThank you all!!!

Camind you are a good nurse, never doubt about! An your english is better than mine, not doubt again about. Take day by day and smile. I know how is to work outside of US with goods and bads... is another life...I totally understand you, but even like that a nurse is a nurse wherever she will be!

Thank you; you are incredible.

Just wanna make some points clearIt's complicated because what u call CNA and LPN here are very different of what u have there.We do have CNAs working in NICU and PICU in some places but you can see that hospitals are replacing them for LPNs and in S�o Paulo and Rio de Janeiro top hospitals they're only hiring BSNs.I'm a new grad nurse. Unlike most countries above Equador line, there are too many nurses here - BSN, LPN and all that jazz -. So, you can imagine how hard is to get a job. From the class I graduated, less than 10% got a job.. and I graduated almost a year ago. That said, I had the chance of getting a job in one private hospital but I refused. and you know why? because I knew that hospital, I knew IH rates are pretty high but mosly I knew that I would never feel like a nurse in that place. But like article wrote... I may not accepted that but someone else did. So, how is it going to end?Article writer pointed out that she left Brasil 6 years ago. Well, nowadays new grads are not going to NICU, ICU or Cardio anymore... you gotta have at least 2 years exp. to try to get a job there. And a postgrad course and/or Nursing Residency. So, we are basically going to Med/Surg, OR,ER and Psychiatry.Nurse/ pt ratio here is shame, I must admit . Once I read that in some countries ratio is around 6-1 / 8-1 . What a dream! When I was in my clinical rotation I had 5-1 . And I was just a student ! One day, in my Nursing Management clinical in Med/Surg we had 39 pts, 2 RNs, 4 LPNs and my friend and I . Awesome, huh? I guess that's why when I meet some foreigners nurses in chats or skype they always say brazilians nurses are very good and can manage chaos well... you wonder why! hahahahahahahahahThere are very few hospitals that make me proud of brazilian health care system and I guess they deserve to be mentioned . They are : INCA ( National Cancer Center ... it's a whole complete new world there) ; INTO ( National Ortho Hospital), IFF ( Perinatology Center, Human Milk Center) .. not to mention some private hospitals.About payment? don't get me started on that subject ....

You are a great nurse, excellent. Nurses should work abroad to appreciate their home. I don't work any more, I am retired, but I too started nursing school at 17 and worked for 40!! What you described in your post reminds me of what it was like here when I first started nursing. As third year students we were in charge of the evening or night shift, sometimes with one LPN nurse, no nursing assistants, in a medical or surgical ward of 40 to 50 patients, or even in the ER. Today it is different, thank God. Students have tutors to work with, they are not in charge even when they graduate, not to speak of different ratios of nursesatients.You have to be proud of yourself!!

Caminb,I need some help if you can spare a few minutes. I am an american RN and I am needing to move to Brasil for personal reasons. My portuguese is not perfect yet so I will work on that but my other problems are that I don't know how to get a nursing license in Brasil. I only have an ASN, not a BSN. Will my ASN be good enough or will I absolutely have to have a BSN? I am assuming that there is a test of some kind that I will need to take to prove proficiency in portuguese. Can you tell me the name of it please? Also if you know anything about getting a VISA that would be helpful. Any help at all that you can give me will me most appreciated!!!!!!!

The difference here is that if this happened, and infiltration can happen fast!, you would be sued and maybe your career destroyed. Nurses are not allowed to be human and have limits in the U.S. There is zero tolerance for things like this that my be out of your control. Even if you are 1:1 sitting there watching that IV every second it takes time before you can see the infiltration and in a little one there still would have been damage. Nursing and medicine have their limits.What a terrible experience for you. I am glad that you did not give up. New nurses have a tendency to try and be everything to everyone. In their enthusiasm they are afraid to say no. It is part of maturation as a nurse that you get the strength to speak up to protect yourself. You learn what is normal and what is achievable.You did your best and I am sure that the girl knew this. It probably made all the difference to her that you helped her through this with all your skill and ability.Bless you for sharing this.