Thanks all you NICU nurses!

Thanks all you NICU nurses (among other outstanding NICU staff)!

I'm training to be a cardiac sonographer at Orange Coast College. I hope to work at either Long Beach Community or Memorial Hospital, b/c I admire the NICU nursing staff there who took care of me when I was critically ill.

I was born 16 weeks early, Apgars were all zero all three times, and I had a massive PDA causing PAH and right-to-left shunt, so I was profoundly cyanotic. I needed to be put on a ventilator (ruined my vocal cords), and I needed surfactant. I also had periventricular leukomalacia and retinopathy of prematurity in my right eye (both of which are pretty much non-issues now). The NICU nurses fought to keep me alive.

The NICU nurses had so much fun with me when I was stable...they'd dress me up, take me across the NICU to a brthday party, etc.

They made me want to get into the medical field. I plan on someday going to St. George's University School of Medicine in Grenada to earn my MD after completing my BS in Echocardiography online at Oregon Institute of Technology. I want to become an interventional cardiologist.

Btw, why do I keep hearing stories of RNs who abuse med students and residents (abusing your future boss is not a good way to build a working enviroment, esp. a hospital); almost all of the RNs I've been around have been so nice.

And why are NPs under the board of nursing, and not the board of medicine...if they're diagnosing and treating, they need to be under the board of medicine. Nurses should stick to nursing, which is what they do best, not try to practice medicine. We have PAs for physician extension. Sadly, I've heard stories from my friends who saw an NP who was incompetent, and who prescribed antibiotics for colds or something like that. The student health clinics at the college gave him a hard time when asked to see the physician.

Thanks,
Doug