NursingZen

An update to Things I wish I knew

Wow, you better sit down for this one. During lunch today my clinical mates and I flopped into armchairs in the lounge and looked at one another with wide eyes and goofy grins.

“I feel like a real nurse this week! Can you believe it??” we blubbered to one another.

Something special happened this week–our second to last week–a period that MEPN calls the “integrative Med-Surg experience.” (Other schools call this the “capstone” period.)

We were tired as ever, but somehow euphoric. The excitement is largely because we can taste The End of our Med-Surg clinicals, but it’s also because we’re functioning and identifying as real nurses.

Prior to this week, we were allowed and encouraged to “pre-lab” (research) on two patients the day before clinicals to prepare ourselves. We also took lunch whenever we felt like it, in addition to taking a 1- to sometimes 2-hour break for “post-conference” with our clinical group, to talk, gripe, snack, chill…

For the integrative experience, however, we arrive in the morning as real RNs do, figure out who our two to three patients will be, and hit the floor running. Our clinical instructor is no longer milling around to quiz us. Our precepting nurse is still ultimately responsible for our patients (and depending on the nurse’s personality and attitude, you can have little or a lot of independence), but we’re to do absolutely everything we can for two to three patients, in addition to making phone calls, directing nursing assistants, and taking care of all necessary administrative tasks. We schedule lunch as regular RNs do and we have no break-time with our clinical group. We’re involved from beginning to end, whether the end be 7:30 p.m. (on a good day) or 8:30 p.m. (as it was for me yesterday).

Prior to this week my clinical group had already transitioned to arriving the morning of clinicals to prepare for our patients (instead of a day earlier), so by this week we didn’t think anything would be very different for us. We were wrong!

Now that we’re charged with being on our own (not having to report to our clinical instructor) and now that we don’t have the respite of our afternoon group meeting to talk about our day and provide support, our sense of responsibility has–unbelievably–quadrupled. Suddenly my clinical mates and I became so wrapped up in our patients that we didn’t have time to stop and chat with one another like we used to. This week we didn’t even take breaks like we used to. I suppose this is partly what made me feel like a “real nurse.” But lest I get too caught up in this feeling, my clinical instructor told me today that we have to fight tooth and nail to keep from developing these habits. She charged my group with taking breaks together next week.

One classmate put it perfectly: “Today I got so caught up in tracking my patient’s I’s and O’s (input and output) that I stopped and said: “Hold on a minute! What about MY I’s and O’s? I have to start tracking my own!” (or else suffer dehydration and UTIs).

The sentiments in this entry are:
- There is sunlight at the end of the tunnel. Some of us might even be able to feel the sun on our skin.
- I can finally say: “This quarter has been hard but we learned a lot. I would do it again–but I’m glad I don’t have to.”
- I’m glad as all hell that I’m not in Schedule B–they’ve still got Med Surg coming up.
- I must keep enjoying the privilege we have as students to goof off just a little…so as not to get UTIs.

Next week will be bittersweet: I’ll be sad to say goodbye to the nurses I’ve gotten to know, but I’ll be ecstatic to close this chapter of MEPN and discover other aspects of what it is to be a nurse.

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