clinicals!

So the first two weeks of clinicals are over. I have been placed on a surgical unit that does a lot of GI, pulmonary, and trauma-related surgeries. It was very much a baptism by fire. Things on the unit rarely go as planned, and no amount of learning about something can take the place of actually doing it. This is outside of my comfort zone because I like to learn by thinking, rather than by doing. I could tell you all the physiological mechanisms underlying why a drug works, but the first time I went to insert that medication directly into my patient's veins, I found myself terrifed. I actually ended up breaking an IV pump because I put the drip chamber in wrong, and while I was tearing up, my instructor and my patient were laughing.

Throughout the course of the two weeks, I've learned a lot. Yes, about charting, about what nurses actually spend their time doing, about IV Protonix and Zofran, about how to use pneumatic compression boots and incentive spirometers, about how to empty drainage from a nasogastric tube or a JP drain. But I've also learned how to interact with patients, that the way you treat them as people is just as important as the way you treat them as a body full of organs. It takes a certain kind of confidence to believe that you are capable of healing people, and I've had to learn that confidence, first by being coached to smile at my patients more, and then by taking on challenges that I don't feel capable of mastering. Then I find that all in all, the procedures go well, the patients get healthy, they go home, feeling grateful for the help of the nursing students who cared for them.

So at the end of week 2, I'm feeling contemplative and of course, as scared as ever. I ask myself if I have what it takes to be a nurse, to make decisions that can change lives. But really, don't we all make decisions that change people's lives? Nurses and patients are a special class because it is a more knowledgeable group acting on a more vulnerable group, but all humanity is full of give-and-take relationships that shape what is real for us. Sit down to tell the story of the most life-altering day of your life, and I bet there's another person involved.

So really, we are witnesses to patients' suffering and advocates for them. We can validate what it must be like to be in such pain and then advocate for their receiving pain medication to treat it. We can do a million technical things and those I am still learning and they are constantly overwhelming me. But what it comes down to is how well we care for our patients, and that cannot be taught. Once you recognize that every human being has dignity, no matter how sick or unpleasant or scared, it becomes our duty to care for these patients the way we would care for any other dignified being, our own sister, for example.