The Day I Started Nursing School

It has been almost four years and I've decided to re-purpose this blog. You know: re-purpose. Like the DIYers do when they want to make an moldy old milk jug into a "colorful" lampshade or something. Not that I don't appreciate my old blog for the moldy milk jug that it was. I just think it'll be more useful now. Like a lampshade. (Which I need one of, but the way, so if you've got one that'll match a mint-green colored lamp, you know who to call.)

Although it certainly wasn't my plan four years ago, I just started nursing school. I am nearing the end of my first week of classes and it occurred to me that now would be a good time to start keeping track of my experiences. Well, actually, my mom said I should. Because she likes reading blogs. (Who knew you were so tech-saavy, Mom! Put down the Bluetooth.) But, she's right. If I manage to do this regularly, I think it'll be very helpful to be able to look back and see what I've gone through as I enter this completely new territory.

We will start with today.

Today was the first time that we actually donned our lab coats and entered the hospital. (I didn't know people actually said "don" and "doff" in instances not pertaining to gay apparel. They do. I've been learning how to correctly don and doff gowns and caps all week.) We were only there for a three-hour shadow experience. I had no particular preference about where I wanted to go and I ended up on the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU).

We came back to talk about our experiences afterward. Some people were super excited. One girl saw a C-section birth. There were a couple of gall bladder surgeries in there. Somebody said their heart was still racing. And while I'm glad for them, I'm kind of happy with what I got, which I think was an fairly normal day on a not-particularly-exciting unit. Not happy because I had a great time or because that's the kind of nursing I want to do. Just happy because I felt like it gave me a very realistic picture of what I'm getting into. In both positive and negative ways.

On the positive side, nurses have a lot of influence. When the meds ordered by a doctor don't look right, or when the nurse notices something about the patient that the doctor missed, the nurses usually say something. And the doctors, from what I've seen, tend to listen. Nurses are the ones with the patients and the families every day and they usually get to know them much better than the doctors do. This is part of the reason I wanted to be a nurse and not a doctor, but it was nice to see it actually working the way I thought it did.

Also, they get to do lots of stuff. Depending on your unit, of course. Not a whole lot happened in the CVICU while I was there, but anything that was happening was being done by nurses. I saw doctors for maybe a total of 30 seconds while I was there.

On the negative side, I was reminded that nursing is a very systemized, routine-oriented, generally conservative world. Not that that's all bad - a lot of those systems and routines are necessary to make things work smoothly. But it seems like it's hard to change them. While I was there, I heard grumblings about the new computer systems being used, a new unit for the hospital being contemplated, and, of course, new doctors. I am sure some of that grumbling is warranted, but I was just reminded how hard it is to implement changes in very entrenched systems. And a big part of the reason I wanted to be a nurse was to help make positive changes in the way things are done.

Adding to that difficulty is the fact that I'm in a weird program where you graduate with a master's in nursing without ever having been a nurse. It's basically getting your BSN and MSN at the same time in 20 months. And I think it definitely strikes some nurses as unfair. Getting a BSN requires 3-4 years. I'll graduate in less than 2 years and have a more advanced degree. There are a lot of reasons why that is - my program requires more clinical hours than BSN programs do (a LOT more than some of them) and the program includes one winter and two summer semesters, plus I'd taken a years' worth of pre-requisites before I even started the actual program. But, in the end, I know that it will seem to some people like I skipped a step. And there's nothing I can do about that other than be as good at my job as I can be and, when I have suggestions for changes, to make those suggestions tactfully and appropriately. But I'm a little nervous. One of the other students in my class said that when she encountered that attitude today, she felt both like she wanted to apologize and defend herself (and the program) at the same time.

It's a little nerve-wracking to think about the future because I'm coming at nursing with a different background and slightly different goals, so I'm not sure how exactly I'm going to fit in wherever I end up. But, this is also the first week. And there is a lot of time to figure that out.