On Being a Nurse

New Hours

2006-10-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

The coolest thing about being a nurse are the vast posibilities...

I have been learning to be an OR nurse and finally will get to do it on my own...

No one watching over me...telling me how to do it their way...

I know how to take care of a patient...I have learned how to do it in the OR...

Tonight I start working nights...

The flexibility is great. I work two 12 hour shifts (Friday and Saturday) and I get paid full time.

And on these nights we get the most trauma...I left the Emergency Room because of the hours, not because of the work...I get to work with trauma now because I am working these nights...YEAH!!

And now I am home during the week with the kids! YEAH!

Indecisions...

2006-09-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I got to feel like a "real" nurse again...

I got to put my hands on a patient in pain and re-assure...

I was not even working.

A woman had fallen on her outstretched arm and broke it. She did not know that she broke it when she fell, she just knew she was in a lot of pain...

I did not see the fall, I saw the results. She was lying on her side, cradling her arm, trying not to cry...

Her six year old was with her...fear in her eyes...'my mommy's hurt'.

I went to the woman's side, helped her sit up and supported her arm...it was definitely broken, felt the bones shifting in my hand.

I sent my six year old to her six year old to re-assure her.

EMS was called.

When they arrived, I knew them from my time in the ED. We worked together to splint her arm and get her into the back of the rig.

I felt like I had made a difference.

I felt like I had been a nurse.

I have not felt that way in awhile...

Maybe the OR is not for me...

But the hours are great, the stress is minimal, I am not exhausted when I get home from work...

What to do...

What to do next...

2006-08-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

Already I am looking at what to do after I have been in the OR for a year.

There are so many different things that I can do.

I have already been:
Staff nurse on surgical unit, on medical unit, on both, on telemetry unit
Office nurse
Camp nurse
Urgent care nurse
Emergency Room nurse in small community hospital
Emergency Department nurse in large trauma hospital
Home health nurse
Navy nurse
Telephone triage nurse

I think now I want to go back to school and teach nursing. Not sure though.

I am enjoying most of the OR. I think when I get to be on my own I will be better able to see if I will want to stay.

I have put in for part time when my orientation is complete so that I can pick up hours in the ED. I feel I need to keep up the ED skills. If you don't use 'um, you loose 'um...

Becoming a nurse

2006-07-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

I did not set out to be a nurse.

In high school, I did not think it was "cool" to be a nurse.

I remember thinking that a nurse was someone who was the doctors handmaid.

A nurse did not think for themselves.

When I was 12, I broke my leg. After wearing a long leg cast for 3 months, I had a skin, hairy, useless leg.

I went to a physical therapist. He hurt me! But he gave me a leg that had muscle. A leg that would bend in the right places. A leg that worked.

I was going to be a physical therapist.

Going to school cost money.

My mom and step-father let it be know throughout high school that they would not be able to pay for school.

It wasn't that they did not want to. It was because there was no money.

I was still going to go to school. I wanted to be a physical therapist.

In my junior year, I took the ASFAB test. It was a military placement test. I took it to get out of class. I did well. Very well.

I started the process of joining the military. I was going to join the Air Force. My recruiter told me I had my choice in where I wanted to work. I told him I wanted to be a Physical Therapist. He told me there was not space at the time. He told me I would be able to work anyplace else. I listened. He brought me to Boston for a physical.

I passed the physical.

Except when the doctor asked if I had wet the bed since the age of 12, I told him the trueth. I had.

I failed the physical. The Air Force did not want me anymore.

I applied to one school. The University of Kentucky. I was accepted into the Physical Therapy Honers program. I had no money. It was too expensive to go as an out of state resident.

I moved to Kentucky to become a state resident. I could afford to go to school that way.

I was so lonely. I lived with a family from the church I went to. But it was not my family. I tried to fit in.

I got a job working nights in a nursing home. I had never been to a nursing home before.

I remember it smelling, always, of urine.

I remember one of the patients who had a bedsore on her hip. It was the biggest bedsore I have ever seen. I have never seen one since that was that large. The sore was open to her hip bone.

I remember having to make some of the patients get up at 5am so that all would be up by 7am.

I remember one patient who would always pinch, pull hair, scream. She was confused, she did not want to get out of bed. She did not know who I was, even though I got her out of bed every morning.

I remember walking around the halls every 2 hours, yanking on draw sheets to turn patients to their other side, changing wet pads, waking patients up for vital signs.

I remember the only nurse there at night. She did not interact with the nurses aides except to give assignments.

She never went into patients rooms except to give medications or when one of the nurses aides told her there was something wrong with a patient.

I did not want to be a nurse.

This nurse I worked with confirmed what I already knew. Nursing was not hands on. Nurses did not care about patients.

About 9 months into living in Kentucky, I had enough money to buy a moped. I had been getting around on my bike.

A crashed the moped two days after I bought it. I was not hurt badly, but I had no support system there.

I went home. My dream to become a Physical Therapist was put on hold. Now I needed to survive.

After living at home for three weeks, I got a job at McDonalds and moved into my own one room apartment. It took another year to figure out that working at McDonalds was a dead end job.

I still wanted to be a physical therapist.

University of Maine had a Nursing Program. All of the prerequisites for Physical Therapy were similar to the prerequisites for Nursing.

I applied to the University of Maine. I was accepted into their Nursing Program. I was determined to ace everything, then changed schools.

Then I started getting into some of the Nursing classes.

Nursing was not what I thought it was.

I fell in love with caring for people. I remained in the Nursing Program and graduated.

I became a Nurse.

What is a nurse?

2006-07-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

A nurse is more than checking lab values, giving medications, bathing patients.

A nurse is more than a profession, more than a job, more than how much money can be made.

I am a nurse. It is who I am. I do not separate myself from "my job" and "my life". It is like being a mom. It does not matter where I go, who I am with, what I am doing. I am still a mom. I am still a nurse.

I did not work in the nursing profession for 2 years. Yet during that time, I still considered myself a nurse.

Being a nurse is about caring, touching, empathizing. It is about helping, being there, being aware of what is going on around you.

However, we are over worked. Often pushing ourselves much more than we should. Although we continue to be a nurse, we can begin to resent it.

I did not work in the nursing profession for 2 years. It was self presevation. I was overworked, making mistakes. Mistakes in the nursing profession are not small. Mistakes can take lifes. Thankfully, I did not.

I stepped away from nursing. But I was still a nurse.

Today, I love what I do.

Today, I am a nurse.