With Ixchel's gracious guidance, Here is this weeks What I Learned This Week. Since Thanksgiving is this week, I want to focus on being thankful for being nurses.
I am thankful that there was a nursing program in my hometown. This is what launched my nursing career. Amazingly, it was the only program I applied to, it never occurred to me to apply any where else. I am thankful that I was even accepted.
Also Thankful that my hometown had a hospital that hired me as a teenage LPN in Labor & Delivery working every Sat & Sun. That job allowed me to continue on for ADN, which led me to a much bigger city, Phoenix AZ. I am glad that although I was a new grad RN, I had a couple of years experience.I am very grateful that I was able to complete my BSN back when there really weren't any RN to BSN programs. I was fortunate to have served in the Navy Nurse Corps. And thankful that so far, have not had student loans. I am thankful to have 2 local universities that have dnp programs.
For those that will be away from your families on Thanksgiving Thursday, myself included, it really is an honor as nurses to be there for patients and patient's families.
What I learned this week: I learned that people of Asian heritage can have Alcohol Induced Red Man Syndrome.
I learned that all the fuss about ICD10 was just that, fuss. It really is making more sense every day.
I am gobsmacked-ly thankful at another job that I have been offered - full time in the hospital of my dreams. Subsequently, I am thankful (gritting my teeth as I type that) to have the terrifying experience of having to quit a per diem job that I only recently started and already learned a tremendous amount from (the guilt is crushing me). I will grow more because of it, I guess.
I learned that I am not as strong as I thought I was getting and that I have to simultaneously be lifted up and dropped way down until I no longer feel human in order to get stronger.
I also learned about bathmotropes and I am slowly coming to apprehend an understanding of the concept of inotropes, as well.
I'm thankful this week for the good CPR training I have received. I have never had to do chest compressions on a real human being until yesterday, but the training kicked right in and I was in auto-mode. It was like I was watching myself in a movie. My hands knew just what to do, wrapped around the infant's chest and just started pumping. I am thankful that I am part of a strong team. One nurse was getting help, and another nurse was there to start bagging. The patient came back to life in my hands just as the code team ran around the corner and the doctor entered the room.
And then I had my panic attack later, in the supply room. ;-)
I learned (relearned) about Narcan, and that my trepidation about it being used in schools have almost nothing to do with Narcan and have everything to do with the psychology of being a SN.
Thanks, heron. You are improving me bit by bit every day.
I've learned that strep and mono are the flavors of the week here in my HS. I've been having a great time looking in throats and feeling glands.
I've learned I need to make a decision about school next semester for my RN-BSN bridge program. It's getting very easy to put off. I think I may sit out next semester.
(It's Tuesday, and I've already learned more than all of last week!)
la_chica_suerte85 - What's the minimum requirement at your per diem job? You might not have to give it up if the minimum is tiny. Mine's two shifts every six weeks - perfectly doable to work that around a full time job.
I've learned I'm apparently just a negative Nancy and I can't be pleased. I can think of a ton of things that I SHOULD be thankful for, but everything feels so full of complications that I can't manage to be thankful for any of it. I'm just feeling extremely un-thankful about everything and just would love to run away. Especially from my job and what classes I'm planning to take next semester.
I re-learned that I wish I could just resource all of the time. I stayed over for four hours Saturday morning after working a 12 Friday night, and I got to:
- Set up BIS monitoring and train of four on someone we were paralyzing
- Bolus the crud out of someone who was fighting the vent hardcore and bag him, and bring up his O2 sat from 68 to 94 while his nurse and the unit RT were busy in another room
- Give three patients their 0900 meds
- Participate in a hour long dressing change that requires three people
- Start a new peripheral in a transfer to palliative care who needed his central out
- Help with one bath and one blowout
- Chauffeur several lost family members to and from the waiting room
- Call the local organ procurement organization
- Call three different physicians about insignificant issues that needed to be addressed because the primary nurses were busy
- Assist with an art line and central line insertion because the patient's nurse was busy in another room
- Toilet a patient who could get up (what the heck?! There are patients that can get out of bed?!)
And for my efforts I earned hugs from two day shift nurses, heartfelt thanks from the physician I was assisting for staying over (and a halfhearted attempt to bribe me to stay longer with a bag of chips), and I didn't have to chart a thing! I would seriously have all the job satisfaction ever if I could just resource all of the time. I think that opportunity to stay over and resource might be the only thing I was grateful for this week.
la_chica_suerte85 - What's the minimum requirement at your per diem job? You might not have to give it up if the minimum is tiny. Mine's two shifts every six weeks - perfectly doable to work that around a full time job.
I've learned I'm apparently just a negative Nancy and I can't be pleased. I can think of a ton of things that I SHOULD be thankful for, but everything feels so full of complications that I can't manage to be thankful for any of it. I'm just feeling extremely un-thankful about everything and just would love to run away. Especially from my job and what classes I'm planning to take next semester.
I re-learned that I wish I could just resource all of the time. I stayed over for four hours Saturday morning after working a 12 Friday night, and I got to:
- Set up BIS monitoring and train of four on someone we were paralyzing
- Bolus the crud out of someone who was fighting the vent hardcore and bag him, and bring up his O2 sat from 68 to 94 while his nurse and the unit RT were busy in another room
- Give three patients their 0900 meds
- Participate in a hour long dressing change that requires three people
- Start a new peripheral in a transfer to palliative care who needed his central out
- Help with one bath and one blowout
- Chauffeur several lost family members to and from the waiting room
- Call the local organ procurement organization
- Call three different physicians about insignificant issues that needed to be addressed because the primary nurses were busy
- Assist with an art line and central line insertion because the patient's nurse was busy in another room
- Toilet a patient who could get up (what the heck?! There are patients that can get out of bed?!)
And for my efforts I earned hugs from two day shift nurses, heartfelt thanks from the physician I was assisting for staying over (and a halfhearted attempt to bribe me to stay longer with a bag of chips), and I didn't have to chart a thing! I would seriously have all the job satisfaction ever if I could just resource all of the time. I think that opportunity to stay over and resource might be the only thing I was grateful for this week.
Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun. Even the "blowout".
Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun. Even the "blowout".
Very "nursey", cali!
It was a lot of fun. There's usually at least three or four absolutely ridiculous crazy-sick actively trying to die patients on my unit at any given time and a procedure or two happening somewhere, and resourcing means I get to stick my fingers into all of that. Sometimes literally, as in the case with the hour long dressing change. I think I was up to my mid-forearm in her at one point, technically speaking.
I am really thinking instead of picking up extra shifts to get extra hours in, I'm just going to ask if I can stay and resource for four hours after every single shift I work. I could work 3 16s and get the same amount of hours as if I worked 4 12s, and I could be there fewer days per week.
To the Nightmare Family I've had the last FOUR days:
There is so much love in this room, and your amazing Dad is lucky to be surrounded by so much love. But DUUUUDE...I'm so over this day...this week. I accepted a job in the ER, and today you had me chanting (under my breath) how awesome it is going to be to TREAT 'EM & STREET 'EM.
Thank you Nightmare Family, for making giving my notice so easy.
I've learned I'm apparently just a negative Nancy and I can't be pleased. I can think of a ton of things that I SHOULD be thankful for, but everything feels so full of complications that I can't manage to be thankful for any of it. I'm just feeling extremely un-thankful about everything and just would love to run away. Especially from my job and what classes I'm planning to take next semester.
I could have written this exact post. I am so over work, school, and practically everything else, that I'm having a really hard time with the whole thankful deal.
I've learned, from reading another thread, that it's perfectly ok to hate your job, question why you ever thought nursing was a good idea in the first place, and generally cry on everyone's shoulder about it.
However, it only seems to apply to new nurses, whether sweet young things or middle aged "second career" nurses.
Those of us who have been doing this for upwards of 25 years have been told at various times that we are just "old, biter nurses", have no ambition because we actually enjoy (or used to enjoy) the "entry level position" that is bedside nursing, and by the way, why don't we just retire or die because we're a bunch of negative Nancys, and don't look nearly as cute in scrubs (with matching stethoscope!) as they do.
I realize this will fall on deaf ears, and I will be dismissed as just another COB who needs to slink off quietly into the night because I simply don't fit into the new nursing norm.
I don't hyperventilate when I have to actually touch sick people. I have no desire to get an advanced degree (you can't seem to walk three feet without tripping over an NP anymore). Management holds no attraction (been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, thanks). I never went to Med school because (gasp!!) I actually WANTED to be a Nurse. I precepted more newbies and herded more students than I can remember, and (mostly) enjoyed it. I got my BSN 36 years ago because "in just a few years it's going to be the minimum standard for nursing". Uh-huh.
Guess what? In spite of all of that, I'm still glad I made the decision to become a Nurse. I'm damned good at what I do, and I enjoy doing it.
la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN
1,260 Posts
I am gobsmacked-ly thankful at another job that I have been offered - full time in the hospital of my dreams. Subsequently, I am thankful (gritting my teeth as I type that) to have the terrifying experience of having to quit a per diem job that I only recently started and already learned a tremendous amount from (the guilt is crushing me). I will grow more because of it, I guess.
I learned that I am not as strong as I thought I was getting and that I have to simultaneously be lifted up and dropped way down until I no longer feel human in order to get stronger.
I also learned about bathmotropes and I am slowly coming to apprehend an understanding of the concept of inotropes, as well.