Shadow Day

This is an excerpt from my nursing clinical journal...I think it paints a really good picture of the struggle I'm having in school so far:

Shadow day at the hospital. I definitely felt better about today than I did about orientation day...what a world of difference being one-on-one with a nurse made. I think I am still experiencing a little bit of reality shock, though. For some reason I just seem to have a picture in my head of what a nurse's job looks like each day, and it is not jiving with what I am seeing actually happen. I can't figure out if this is because I am seeing a Med-Surg unit and that's just what Med-Surg units happen to look like (while some other unit matches my mental image), if it is because I have not yet seen a nurse who performs nursing care the way I envision myself doing it, or if it is because I really just have a skewed picture of what the nursing profession looks like. It is a little bit discouraging, but I keep reminding myself that the nursing field is so broad; somewhere out there is a niche for me. I just have to find it. :)

I think another little point of discouragement is the reality of the nursing shortage and all that follows because of it. We are reading Bed Number Ten for Cheek's class, and I was horrified to read of all the miscommunication between staff and the lack of loving, personal care to each patient. I thought I was reading about a rare unfortunate situation, but I'm finding out it is reality. There really are lazy nurses, there really are communication breakdowns (frequent, actually), and there really is a lack of warm, personal care, simply because nurses are stressed, busy, and overloaded. I don't want ever to become that kind of nurse, and I'm afraid that working in an environment that repeatedly puts me in that situation will mold me into that shape.

On the bright side, I am really looking forward to relationship-building with my patients, and I am thankful that I will only have one patient to really focus on each day, leaving me with lots of time for personal attention. Even just the small amount of time I had with first-time acquaintances today, I experienced the emotional high of helping someone get to the bathroom. Sounds weird, I know, and it probably won't last, but I felt really good being someone's rock--meeting such a real and tangible need. I enjoyed helping. I really think that med-surg is going to be a difficult unit for me, just because of the rapidly changing clientel. I see myself doing better in a unit such as oncology, or even in a nursing home, where I am able to interact with clients for longer periods of time, getting to know them as people with lives rather than just bodies in beds.

That's all for today, I guess. Mental note: stuff more PB crackers in my scrub pockets next week. I gave mine away and was really shaky by the time we got out of post-conference today. This is not conducive to learning!!