Becoming a Nurse the Hard Way

twistedpupchaser

My interest started at the age of 13 when my mother dropped me at the local ambulance station, gave me a pen and notebook and told me to go inside. I became a St John Ambulance Cadet that night and learned how to stop a bleed with pressure and elevation. I never looked back, each skill had a meaning and I was fascinated to learn how to fix the human body within a First Aid context. I shunned the "Home Nursing" modules, they were for the girls, I wanted to learn about trauma!

When I was 17 I transferred to the Adult ranks of volunteers, yet had to wait before I could do the courses to ride the "cars". A friend told me about the Army Reserve, the medics can suture, give AB's and play with all sorts of cool stuff. I joined and loved it, another friend suggested becoming a nurse, I laughed but was intrigued. Nurses get to play with cool stuff, I must admit I had blinkers on even then, Emergency, was all I saw.

Finally, I got into a nursing programme at the local University, I was stoked! What more could a young bloke ask for, I was doing something I had worked hard for and I was surrounded by lots of girls! I finished the first Semester with passable grades, between the girls and Uni Bar I didn't study as well as I should have. As I started my second Semester my girlfriend told me that she was pregnant and we were getting married. I quit nursing to support my family because that's what you do, so I was told.

I got myself a series of dead-end jobs, cleaning, trolley collection, etc. Any work that would put food on my families plate. Fast forward 11 years and I was a security guard in a rough job, still using my first aid skills but usually, this meant knowing how to treat myself and my workmates in addition to teaching how to get blood stains out of uniforms. I was made redundant from that job when the contract came up and another tender won, so off to East Timor, I went. I worked security in Dili for 6 months before I was made redundant when the UN decided that East Timor was stabilized and didn't need any more help.

I came home realizing that I had to get something stable to support my wife and tribe of kids, I knew contract type work was not going to be reliable but also knew that I had to get some skills. I was still a medic in the Army Reserve and still loved the work and reconsidered doing nursing. The decision made, I went back to Uni while studying full time I had to work full time to support my family. Things went bad in my first year, I had a lecturer tell me that if I couldn't give the time to look up obscure stuff that was hidden due to her laziness I should give up Uni. Only the support of another lecturer got me to keep going.

Working and studying full time is taxing for the best of us, for me, it was sheer hell.

I didn't sleep much, my wife was miserable and my kids just saw a cranky man who came home to change clothes, sleep and sometimes eat. I thought it couldn't get worse, as usual, I was wrong, along came clinical placements. Working full-time with my placements, studying and working part-time in my other job, I had to drop to part-time in my paid job so I could sleep at times. Money got very tight, so did the expression on my wife's face. We stuck it out and I got my degree...finally!

You would think that this is the end of the story, you couldn't be further from the truth. I started a Grad programme, which meant on top of my work, I had education days, homework and a lot of accumulated stress from all of these sources. My first placement was not what I expected, lateral abuse from the senior nurses, (they were all senior to me) and a preceptor who still thinks that men don't belong in nursing. I came home from work after every shift wanting to tell my wife that I had stuffed up, nursing wasn't for me. I kept with it because of how hard I worked and more importantly, the sacrifices my family made for me to get there.

My next rotation was completely different, I worked with the greatest people you could imagine if I needed help or advice they were there. Social and professional support from the entire team was second to none, I just hated the work, long-term care in an acute setting was not what I was after. I came home physically and emotionally drained from looking after hypoxic brain injuries, strokes and others who would never get better. I still had the homework, filling in books to show that yes, I do know how to take obs and do know how to assess breath sounds. While I didn't want to quit, I knew that I wanted something different.

Finally, I got to the Emergency Department, I love it, the team, the work is what I wanted from nursing all those years ago. My job is perfect, I get annoyed like everyone, but this is my place. The moral of this story is that if nursing is for you, eventually you will get there, I climbed those hurdles, starting again in my early thirties because nursing is for me. The hurdles I think are just there to prove you really want to do something, if you want it enough you will get over or around any hurdle. Now all I have to do is convince the wife that I need my Post-Grad Diploma in Emergency Care...I might leave it for a while.

Becoming a Nurse the Hard Way

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