The Right (and Wrong) Way to Ask Questions as a New Nurse Practitioner
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Show notes:
When you're a new nurse practitioner, you need to make thousands of decisions a day.
(Which usually translates to thousands of questions).
I made mistakes as a new grad, and luckily for me, I had a very patient colleague who was there to help guide me.
Avoid This Mistake As A New Nurse Practitioner
In this video, I'll share:
Some of my mistakes (I'm a little embarrassed)
Three easy steps to make sure you ask questions the right way (so you get the answers you're looking for and build and maintain your colleague relationships)
If you liked this post, also check out:
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Hey there, welcome to the Real World NP podcast.
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I'm Liz Rohr, family nurse practitioner, educator, and founder of Real World NP, an educational
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Well, hey there, it's Liz Rohr from Real World NP, and you're watching NP Practice
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made simple, the weekly videos to help save you time, frustration, and help you learn
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more faster so you can take better care of your patients.
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So today I want to talk to you about the right way and the wrong way to ask questions
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as a new grad.
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I'm going to tell you about some of the mistakes that I made, and then three steps
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to make it really easy for you to avoid the mistakes that I made.
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So I had an amazing grad experience in my NP program, and I worked with a clinician
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who unfortunately because of both her personal style and the clientele that she worked with,
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I did a lot of shadowing instead of seeing patients on my own.
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I learned a ton just by absorbing passively, but I didn't really have that skill down
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of seeing patients on my own.
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When I graduated, I pretty much adopted one of my colleagues as my adopted preceptor,
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and that's not necessarily what she had signed up for because she was my colleague,
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she wasn't my supervisor, she wasn't my preceptor, I wasn't a student.
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So what I would do is I would go into a room, I'd see a patient, I'd just
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blurt out whatever was happening just like in the middle of the story without any context,
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and I'd just be like, what should I do?
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Thank you so much Christina for your patience with me.
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That's an example of like the wrong way to ask questions.
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So our colleagues are there to help us, and they've been there too, and so it's
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okay to ask questions, but there's definitely a better way to ask so that you get the
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answers that you're looking for, and also you build and maintain your colleague relationships.
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So that's kind of a lot to ask of one of your colleagues to just do what I did.
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So step one, the first thing is really presenting a case, and I, when I was in school I found
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this to be a little bit old school, maybe it's not, maybe I'm just stubborn, but
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in terms of those classic case presentations of like I have a 33 year old woman with
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abdominal pain and blah blah blah blah, you know, I was very lackadaisical about
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it and I don't think that that helped me.
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So I don't think you necessarily have to be very rigid, but if you can work on
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presenting a case in an organized way so that you give all of the relevant
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pertinent information to the person you're asking the question of, that's
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really, really helpful.
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So, you know, for example, I've got a 33 year old woman with new onset
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abdominal pain, right upper quadrant, started last night, it was 10 out of 10.
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Now it's about eight out of 10.
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She has no nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dysuria, hematuria, vaginal discharge.
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You know, et cetera, et cetera.
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And no past medical history, no past surgical history, anything kind of
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relevant, no family, pertinent family history.
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And so if you start with step one by presenting your case, when you go to
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step two, the next step, instead of saying like, what should I do?
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You just have to do as much of the legwork as you can.
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And so luckily for me, when I first started, and this kind of ties into
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my first video, which I can link to in the, in the comments below.
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Is that you need to have the time, enough time in your schedule to be
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able to do all of that learning and all that legwork so that you know what
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you're doing and you're not kind of relying on your colleagues to
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give you all the answers, you know, stabbing at the differentials,
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the possible treatment options and taking it from there.
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So for this particular patient, she took Tylenol a couple of times,
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maybe 500 milligrams and didn't really help her.
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It seems to be slightly improving, but it seems like it's also radiating
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down to her left lower quadrant.
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And I think that I'm really worried that it's, you know, something
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she has no fever.
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You can tell that I'm still a little bit lackadaisical about my
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presentations and I have to write them down, but I didn't, I left out
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that she had no fever or chills, but you know, she, you know, your
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right upper quadrant has your spleen, your left lower quadrant has your
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intestines, and I'm thinking about, you know, your ovaries are there.
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Like, is this something ovarian?
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It doesn't really seem like it's intestinal.
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Spleen is a pretty rare differential.
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So kind of starting with there with the discussion.
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Step number three is to ask a specific question as possible.
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So what I would use to do, even if I got the first two steps right,
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I'd still be like, oh, well, do you agree with that?
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And I got feedback from somebody that kind of said to me, and I agree
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with this, that the practice of medicine is, is an art, even though
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we have guidelines and we have recommendations and usually getting
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from A to B, you'll get there, but people will do it a little bit
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differently stylistically.
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So I kind of changed my phrasing to either, what do you think about that?
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Or what other tests would you order?
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Or, you know, something a little bit more specific.
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So those are the three steps.
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Number one, presenting your case a little bit more concisely than I am.
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I write mine down.
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And so when I write it down and I'm reading it off, it's more concise.
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So I do, I do take my own advice.
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Number two is doing as much of the legwork as possible.
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Coming up with differentials and a stab at a plan.
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Hopefully the full plan, if you can, if you have that full hour to look at
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your patient's chart and your resources.
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And then number three is just asking those specific questions so they can
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guide you the best that they can.
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So I'd love to hear from you.
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Are there any strategies that you use to kind of build those relationships,
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ask the questions to get the right answer?
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Leave me a comment below.
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It helps me and it helps our other colleagues learn and do better.
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So, um, so that's it for today.
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Thank you so much for watching.
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Hang in there and I'll see you next time.
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That's our episode for today.
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Thank you so much for listening.
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