One more day

To be done with my schooling is both scary and exciting. I feel like I've learned more about what kind of nurse I am not going to be rather than how to be an excellent nurse. Today I have completed my required 64 hours of student "preceptorship". I was assigned a nurse who works at our local hospital in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU). I got to see her practically get into a fist fight with a physician over the cause of a patients reduced level of consciousness. They were literally in each other's faces, in front of patients, family, nurses and ME!! The real life me was thrilled by the experience. I mean how many times do you get to see a doctor and a nurse literally screaming at each other, and the naughty me was thinking "maybe I'll get to go home early" (hey, it was the second day of two 12 hour shifts in a row, I was a little tired!). The student side of me was thinking "Okay, observe and learn, this is important information on how NOT to communicate".

So I got to see a lot but do very little as in an intensive care unit, the applicable skills of a student nurse are limited. I did get to start a few I.V.s which is always very exciting for a student to do. I saw some "code" then die. I brought a lot of "warmed" blankets to patients who were cold, because the nurses were also cold, but in a different sort of way... I just focused on learning as much as I could, becoming as comfortable in that environment as possible and tried to stay human. It's amazing how experienced nurses and doctors will speak as if the patient were not there about trivial things such as, kidneys shutting down and it "not looking good". I watched patients eyes when they were being spoken about but not spoken to, it was easy to do because I was ignored almost as much as they were most of the time.

I have two interviews coming up in the next couple of weeks, none of them at the hospital I trained at, I don't want to work there.

I have finished my friend Karen's dish towel. I need to make her a couple of wash clothes and I can hand them over to her. I'm working on two scarves right now, one for each of the handicapped individuals I work with. I've worked with them specifically for the past two years so the bond is quite strong. I want to leave them with something to keep them warm when I leave the company.