Am I too hard on myself or just incompetent?
I’m a 2nd year sonography student in clinicals rn about to graduate in a few months. Tomorrow i start at a new site. I haven’t scanned abdo, pelvis, vascular for 2 months since my previous site was OB only (which I really enjoyed). I’m feeling nervous and rusty in my skills. My anxiety has not been great since my last last hospital site. I was feeling incompetent there due to technically difficult patients, being roasted for my patient history taking and unable to finish a full abdo. The preceptor there said I was doing good during my first half then suddenly got very picky the last half and said I wasn’t consistent. During that time I was having extreme anxiety issues and overthinking my skills. I got very nervous during my scans and would forget one thing in a scan, and was told that I was not allowed to forget a single thing at my stage (like asking when’s your last LMP, when did u last eat, etc). I would spend a long time assessing when seeing a pathology instead of documenting it because I was scared the preceptor would stop me during the scan and judge it (as they’ve done before). I’m not sure if I keep overthinking my assessment due to these words, because I would spend too much time trying to “perfect” and image for them. Like if I don’t try to perfect an image, they would get mad at me. So I ended up having a habit of doing that and making my scans less efficient. But they would also get mad that I spend too much time assessing.
I’m also scared about the preceptors for the next site, I’ve been hearing that they can be quite scary and very picky. Some of my classmates have cried there. I haven’t been able to work well under pressure since the hospital I’ve mentioned above, and especially if the person is a bit mean or very picky. I have thoughts that I may fail to graduate. I keep thinking that I chose the wrong path.
Even at this stage, I don’t know if I’m able to complete a difficult scan on my own and I’m supposed be doing comps at this next rotation. I just feel like im not competent enough. When a tech compliments me that I’ve done well on a scan, I don’t believe them because I don’t always feel that way with my scans. There are days where I still struggle with an average patient when I shouldn’t be. I try to be positive but nothing really works out.
I’m supposed to be job hunting rn but because of all this stress I don’t feel like I should be job hunting. I have applied to a few places but yet to hear back.