The Intensive Art

YAY! I’ve been tagged! Julie over at Life in the NHS has asked me to list five things I couldn’t live without as a nurse.

1. My electronic gadgits. These include the following: iPod, Sirius Satellite radio, iBook, satellite television, Xbox, World of Warcraft…the list goes on and on. These devices do everything from entertain me on my walk to work, help me research nursing stuff, and more than anything, help me relax between shifts and on days off. My latest obsession is my Stilletto 100 that helps me listen to Sirius Satellite Radion. I am particularly in love with OutQ 109.

2. The intangeble parts of my personality that are improving, and allowing me to grow into this profession a little bit more every day. These include: the increasingly thicker skin I grow to protect me from the attitudes of other nurses and allows me to learn from them instead of cower, my growing ability to take control of medical/psychological situations with patients, and the increasingly positive attitude that I find myself going to work with…and seeing the effect it has on the people around me.

3. Student Nurses. I knew that going into this profession I would fall in love with the idea of teaching. Even in the early stages I love when I am buddied-up with student nurses. I love showing them new skills, explaining disease processes, and telling them stories of my “first time” doing things…which was usually much more disasterous than their’s. I especially love that every time I have a student with me, they are able to teach me more about the patient and their condition. More than anything…that student that said, “I never would have guessed you just graduated! I would have thought you were a full on RN if I hadn’t seen your name tag.”

4. Patients. Sometimes. I worked five days in a row last week, and I had the same patients almost every day. They were wonderful, supportive, interesting, kind people. I realized this week that increasingly strong skills, mixed with a touch of confidence, makes you feel like you’re starting to really deserve that RN title that is hopefully on its way (They’re probably marking my test as we speak). I even love that one patient this week that went “off the deep end.” She had a long psych history and when we tried starting an IV on her she FREAKED and started screaming and yelling. I drew from my psych knowledge, set boundaries, told her exactly what was appropriate and not…then I used my communication skills to have a long conversation with her about why she needs the IV. A few minutes later, my manager complimented me on how quickly I diffused the situation. Then a patient who overheard said he was a teacher, and he felt my abilities to work with a “problem patient” were wonderful. *warm fuzzies*

Psych nurse Sean? I always did love Psych nursing…

5.) My coworkers! I will make this simple. I have learned more from my coworkers in three months than I did in my entire four year nursing degree!

Sean

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 16:02 and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.