My first 2 weeks of real life nursing.

I love my job. How many people get to say that?!?

My first week was orientations and computer classes. Each day, we got out earlier than scheduled. By far the best day was the first, which was hospital orientation. They told us all about the hospital, its history, things like that. Their mission statement goes like this: "Our mission is to extend the healing ministry of Jesus in the tradition of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange by continually improving the health and quality of life of people in the communities we serve. Our vision is to care for the medically underserved, to create healthier communities, and to alleviate conditions which limit access to basic health services."

How's that? Their mission is to extend the healing ministry of Jesus?!? And I get to work here? So this is why no other hospitals were calling me or interviewing me. I'm supposed to be here.

Since I have a whole 2 days under my belt as a true RN (yikes!), I've learned a few things the last couple of days, but I realized a whole lot more. I give you the highlights:

-magically attached to my license (which is curiously the same size as a credit card, but without the benefits) is, I think, the ability to remember to do things when you're supposed to, like rotating boots that prevent foot drop and cleaning out someone's mouth every 4 hours when they're on a ventilator. I always wondered how I would remember. All I have to say is it's in the plastic.

-apparently, when everyone pitched a fit about BPH in plastic and they took it out, IV bags went from being nice and pliable and quiet to squeaky, loud and crinkly. Thanks a lot, like my patients needed something else to wake them up. Oh wait, they're heavily sedated and totally unresponsive... you're lucky on this one, that's all I got to say.

-in my first conversation with a doctor on the floor, it was a neurosurgeon, he was nicer than nice and when I told him my patient was swelling like a tick because of his excessive IV intake and could I take his IV fluid rate down a notch, he wrote me orders to fix it. I was scared to do this in school?!? Which leads me to...

-as soon as you're not in freaking all-white nursing school scrubs, you are seen in a different light. Almost like you're part of "the club". It's awesome! I've had 2 doctors just talk to me and ask me questions about my patient and not only did I answer them correctly, they believed me! I'm not kidding you, this is just amazing.

-I look HOTTT (yes, with 3 T's) in all navy. So slimming. So bootcut. So the exact opposite of all white and tapered ankles. Hallelujah.

-after giving my patient 5 different things to make him take a crap (including 2 enemas within 5 minutes of each other), he unloaded about 2 liters of poo. The way I described it to the Tall One was like this: you know on those trauma/ER shows where the dude comes in with a gunshot wound and blood is just dripping onto the floor into huge puddles? That was me yesterday. With poo. I can safely say that the 2 liters is a good guess because we used a suction catheter and a canister to vacuum a lot of it up to make it easier to clean up and that was at least a liter there. It took 3 of us 45 minutes to clean up, but when we were done, it was like nothing had happened in there. But we knew...

-I watched CSF (the nice, sterile, clear fluid surrounding your brain and spinal cord) burble out of a lady's incision when she coughed. A nurse said let's clean the area with sterilizing solution and then put a clean bandage over it. Um, I'm pretty sure I learned that is the WRONG thing to do, but since it wasn't my patient, I'm new AND a grunt, I kept my mouth shut. Nobody likes an overeager new grad spouting textbooks. I still don't know if that was the right decision.

-checking a patient's blood sugar and then giving insulin based on the result is so much easier than when I was a student! Before, I had to do the test, show the nurse, get the insulin, show it to my nurse, get ANOTHER nurse, show her, then give it. Now? I AM the nurse! I show one other nurse and bam!- give it to my patient. Nursing school is so complicated.

-two days on the floor, and I'm already going home with medications. In my shift report, I told the oncoming RN that I hadn't given a 5mg tablet of a med because the order called for 10mg and the pharmacy had only sent me one 5mg tablet. They never sent me the second tab, so I put it back in my patient's med drawer. Or so I thought. I raced home a half hour late, showered and we were off the the OC fair. Before leaving, I took all my nursey stuff out of my purse- and that included the 5mg tablet. Pissed. So I dropped it off on the way to the fair.

I like nursing!! I love my job!!!