Love O.B. Nursing

glassmama628, RN

This May it will be forty years since I received my R.N. diploma, from Iowa Methodist School of Nursing in Des Moines. Little did I know at that time how varied, exciting, fulfilling, questioning, stressful, and rewarding this profession would be. I recently "retired" from nursing, although this may just be a temporary hiatus, a time to reflect back to the beginning...

My nursing education at Methodist was excellent. As an eighteen-year-old starting in August of 1973, I had no idea about the challenges that lie ahead. By October, we were working alongside the staff on the med-surg floor, being responsible for the direct patient care under their supervision. Prepping began the evening before, when we wrote up careplans for our patients assigned the next day. Recently I found one of these in storage, and was amazed at the detail required- the patient's diagnosis, disease process information, current needs, nursing actions, and evaluation. We were taught holistically to look at the whole patient and their support system, not just their physical concerns. This is something I hope continues in today's nursing education.

With a thirty-three month program- no summers off here- the nursing rotations continued to expand our experience. Freshman year we took our college courses at Drake University. In clinical, we started IV's and inserted GI tubes on one another- this was "hands on" training. The course work was difficult, with many short nights cramming for exams, and not all who started the program finished. The preparation we received for taking state board exams was valuable beyond compare.

When the specialties rolled around, we were truly embedded. In the O.R. we scrubbed in, not just observing procedures through the glass. We lost several of our smallest patients in Pediatrics due to cancer during that three-month rotation, especially difficult for the families as it was during both winter holidays. We had our Psychiatric rotation at Iowa Lutheran hospital, as it had a more comprehensive unit than at our hospital. With each various specialty we were given the opportunity to experience it fully, learning the nuances of being an R.N. in that area, and evaluating our response to each. As I watched my first delivery in O.B., it was so amazing that I chose it as my first nursing position after graduation.

Six months after working 3-11 in Labor and Delivery, I was put in charge of the evening shift full-time. As a major metropolitan hospital, Iowa Methodist has a booming obstetric unit. At that time we were doing three hundred deliveries per month. It was not unusual to have four to six babies deliver in one shift. Shortly after I took the charge position, one of the OB-Gyns asked a multiparous patient if I could participate in the actual delivery. As he told me aside, "I want someone that knows how to catch a kid if I get hung up at a cocktail party some night!" My knees didn't shake until after the baby was born, and I was grateful for the patient giving me this opportunity.

Iowa was an early state for CEU requirements, so a conference on Emergency Childbirth was first on my list. Twice more I had to deliver a baby with only the help of my staff. The first patient was crowning upon arrival to the unit from ER, and the second was a quadruple multip whose labor and delivery kicked into overdrive as her membranes ruptured, while her doctor didn't want his "time wasted" waiting in house for her to deliver. Fetal monitoring was newly becoming mainstream care, and we learned to read strips and apply fetal electrodes. Most deliveries were uncomplicated, but there were also those that were high-risk, involving problems of preterm labor, pre-elampsia, or fetal distress.

I moved after two years down to the O.R., lured by no weekends or holidays, except for being on-call. Later I worked as a traveling nurse for a year, switching between both O.R. and O.B. contracts, eventually taking a full-time position when I met my husband in Florida. My last L&D position was in Illinois as the "Pit nurse"- monitoring inductions, which have become increasingly (and I think, unfortunately) more prevalent.

Even though I have been out of O.B. nursing for many years, it will always have a soft spot in my heart. It may not be the area for every nurse- it is by nature a very close, intensely patient-centered level of care. As an O.B. nurse you will find both extreme happiness when all goes well, and truly bottomless sorrow when it does not. You are responsible for two patients in one, and must think on your feet, monitoring and anticipating needs of both. And mostly, you are able to share with them this basic human experience- the truly amazing gift of life.

Love O.B. Nursing

What is your level of nursing education

About glassmama628, RN

More Like This