I know your were dying for me to come back and finish telling you about my college experience....Well college was fun...It took me a year to really fit in to the college scene...I had no problems making friends...but I wasn't going to give up my study habits....I was a die-hard for sticking to my class objectives and reading list and studying every night ......But I did make time on the weekends for some fun...I didn't get real crazy....but don't get me wrong...I did enjoy a party or many.... but all and all I finished college with a 3.5gpa...back to how college prepared me to be a nurse....The first 2 years of college were all the liberal art courses and general requirements...I was dying...all I wanted to do was be a NURSE My sophomore year was pretty interesting this is where we took the hard core science classes to prepare us to enter nursing. In anatomy class we dissected a cat. In microbiology we cultured everything under the sun and looked at it under the microscope. In pathology we learned all about diseases and Psychology we learned about mental illness ...finally my junior year I got to take my first nursing course...but the biggest event was the capping...yes the capping...this is an elaborate ceremony where you wear your student nurse uniform (blue dress with a white pinafore) and get inducted as a student nurse...this ceremony acknowledges that I have survived the boring first two years of my liberal arts and required course and am now taking the plunge to finally learn to be a Nurse...the ceremomy ended with each of us receiving our caps...each nursing school has their own personalized cap...ours were square shape and had a purple and gold stripe ..our school colors.....now the real hard work starts....we were now required to attend 3 1/2 day classes devoted to learning nursing skills/nursing theory/nursing process and on our own time we had to go to the nursing simulation lab...this is where we practiced on mannequins how to give bed baths; make a bed with a patient in it;do dressing changes; use bed pans...take vital signs...once we passed this lab we were set to go on our first clinical rotation....Each clinic rotation was 2 days a week and lasted a whole semester. My first rotation was in a day care center...I really wasn't getting this...but I guess it fit into the curriculum somehow...The really cool rotations were Obstetrics...ahhh and if you were the lucky one you could even watch a baby born...I never was lucky ...the really scary rotation was at a Psychiatric Hospital....we were each assigned a psych patient...my patient was schizophrenic and was obsessed with talking about trucks .....and sex....this was a scary place especially on the locked units...when that locked door closed behind you and you turned around to see all the psychiatric patients walking aimlessly and talking to themselves...you wanted to get out of there but fast....the most challenging rotation was Cardiac Care and Med Surgical Units...it wasn't because the patients were complicated...it was the instructors ..the Cardiac Care instructor would expect you to memorize all of your patients medications. Not only did you have to memorize the medications you had to write each of the medications on a 3x5 card and copy word for word what was in the PDR about this medication....that was what you were to memorize....plus on top of that...the instructor would lock you and her in the med room the next day staring you down and quizzing you about all the medications and what was on that 3x5 card....thank God I got through that one...Oh and the med surg instructor....would stand behind you when you were with your patient making sure you were doing everything right ...for example how would you like your instructor looking over your shoulder when you were catheterizing a patient for the first time....and this was a sterile procedure..you couldn't do anything wrong....
When I look back on my clinical rotations I remember one patient that stands out and I really feel bad for this person now and what I put him through...He was going through DT's was hallucinating and confused...he had multiple IV lines and I was trying to bathe him and change his hospital gown...being a novice and trying to thread all the IV tubes through his old gown and threading the tubes back into the new gown...well needless to say...it was one big knot when I was done.. the patient survived but it took me about 30minutes to get everything straightened out....
Despite all of this I made it ....the pomp and circumstance was the pinning...this was another ceremony marking the completion of our nursing requirements to label has a Graduate Nurse...during the ceremony we proudly wore white nursing uniforms, our caps and were pinned with the nursing school pin....we were on our way to pick up where Florence Nightingale left off....this was an exciting time...I had a job waiting for me at that same Community Hospital where I candy stripped at working on a Medical Surgical Floor...I was going to work 3-11 shift...BUT it doesn't stop here...I still had one more big step to take before I could be a full fledged RN...that was taking the BOARDS....
No comments:
Post a Comment