It sounds strange, but it’s not always easy for me to tell if I’m enjoying bedside nursing because of the many frustrations with the hospital system, the challenges with management and co-workers, and the aspects of the job that are physically taxing or routine. So, in an attempt to assess my level of enjoyment and fulfillment with bedside nursing, in the past few months I’ve been asking myself these questions:

How do you feel in the following situations?
– When you don’t feel like going to work, how do you feel once you get to work?
– How do you feel one hour after you get off a shift?

You see, once in a while we all dread going to work, but how often that happens and how you feel once you’re there can give insight into whether the job or place is a right fit. I have a friend who dreads every single shift. I’m sure she’s conscientious at work, but she admits she’s always thinking about the end of the shift and going home. After work, she’s always exhausted and relieved to be done. She has survived a year, but she doesn’t intend to make it two.

In contrast, I’ve noticed that even when I’m dragging my feet to work, as soon as I step on to the floor and start getting report, I feel a burst of energy and excitement (good ole’ adrenaline). As soon as I lay eyes on my patients and start talking to them, I become completely tuned in and forget about everything outside the hospital for the next eight hours. After work, once I’ve unwinded at home, I’m eager to look up information I didn’t understand during the shift.

These must be signs that I’m currently doing the right thing in the right place, right?

Does anyone else out there run mini-mentals on one’s self?

   This year should be a different story. This year it’s all about the core Nurse Practitioner coursework and clinical residencies.

Today was the first day of class and I felt as giddy as I did on the first days of elementary and high schools. Today a detailed, well-written syllabus and my brand-spanking new Advanced Health Assessment textbook were a joy to behold and read…

And after many doubts and much back and forth in the past year, I’m happy with my decision to do the Master’s program over three years instead of two. I feel I have a more well-rounded life than if I were to be a student only. Although the nursing school officially discourages students from veering off the prescribed three-year MEPN-Master’s path and the two-year Master’s path, the Adult Nurse Practitioner faculty has been understanding and supportive of students who need to make changes along the way. I have been one lucky duck and cannot wait to get cracking!

And my answer to the question was one of my greatest fears: Maybe I’m becoming an uncreative, unreflective, dull, self-absorbed, regimented nurse zombie.

Indeed, I think I went there. I think I became so tired and overwhelmed – and so intent on not being tired and overwhelmed – that I just disappeared into my work and my regimen/routine, and thereby had no energy to reflect and share.

I also felt uninspired to blog because around May it struck me that my unit sees the same types of patients every day, most of the assessments I do are repeated patient after patient, and many tasks can be routine. For example, get medications (usually a beta blocker, proton pump inhibitor, anticoagulant, and diuretic), check meds, explain/administer meds, repeat. Pull femoral arterial sheath, hold pressure, check pulse, check vitals, assess groin site/dressing, repeat.

On the one hand, I was delighted that I’d become comfortable enough with my job to consider some things “routine.” On the other hand, I began to worry that I was getting sucked into a task-oriented mindset. Although as a novice I know it’s natural to be task-oriented, I could see how easy it is for tired nurses to have only enough energy to complete their tasks and nothing left to take on challenges and continuously seek knowledge and professional growth. I could see that the path of least resistance was that of following routines.

For a couple months, I found myself teetering at the precipice of a dreary and boring nursing career. This scared me back to my senses. Since July, I’ve pulled back from the cliff and have been running the other way. For example, instead of being bored by the medications that I have to pull over and over again, I take extra time to learn and remember new things about the meds. Instead of viewing a sheath pull as a boring, time-consuming task, I experiment with methods to make the procedure more pleasant for the patient and less tiring for my arms and back. Most important, I remind myself that pulling a sheath out of someone’s femoral artery is never boring — vigilance is key to avoiding a multitude of potential complications.

A book that I recommend for new and growing nurses is Patricia Benner’s “From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Practice.” It comforted me when I read it as a new grad last year because it normalized the incompetency I felt. It comforted me this summer when I worried about being consumed by tasks and routines.

Today…
- I arrive at the hospital only 15 minutes early.
- I leave the hospital a half hour late.
- I pray a little less fervently before every shift.
- I think up and try nursing interventions before calling an MD.
- I triple check my medications (though to be honest I recently gave a patient a double dose of Simvastatin).
- I’m starting to get a feel for the rhythm of the unit and the hospital, so that I have an idea of what to expect.
- I’ve developed good relationships with several nurses who are smart, nurturing, and kind, and I try to stay clear of those who aren’t.

Warm, balmy nights bring me right back home to New York.

Tonight I walked home from work wearing my short sleeves and stopped every half block to be bowled over by the smell of freesia.

Tonight I was floated to the new-nurse-friendly unit and pigged out at a birthday potluck: chap jae, California rolls, chow mein, BBQ pork, adobo chicken, brownie, and ice cream.

Life is pretty good.

I was “floated” (assigned to work in a unit that is not my usual) for the first time tonight, but contrary to expectations, I wasn’t left hanging by my fingernails on a deadly precipice.

As soon as my assignment was given to me, my colleague, who happens to be a union representative, was assessing my assignment to make sure it was fair. When we learned that I was given a fresh post-CABG patient, with whom I have no experience, he tried to get my assignment changed.

When he couldn’t change it because of staffing issues, he said, verbatim: “I’ll be your back-up. Don’t worry. You come to me with any questions.” Unbelievably, he was also to serve as a break relief and help get vital signs.

At the same time, the manager pulled a nurse from a non-urgent assignment and said to her: “You watch after the two floats and help them.”

This nurse then said to me: “I’ll be the care partner (until we get a care partner in a couple hours). You just do your assessments and get yourself oriented and comfortable.”

Throughout the evening, I asked plenty of questions because I wasn’t used to the patient types or the charting. Not once did I get a head-shake, raised eyebrow or condescending tone.

The unit clerk answered call lights for me with a smile.

In the break room, nurses I’ve met only once greeted me by name and asked how I was doing.

At the end of the evening, the manager reviewed my charting and reminded me to fill in some fields. My back-up nurses both asked me how I felt and whether I had any more questions.

Before I clocked out (on time!), I thanked the manager (and everyone else) for watching out for me and I asked if I could get floated here in the near future to reinforce everything I learned tonight.

I know I was given fairly easy patients tonight and that I won’t always have back-up, but everything that happened tonight brings me energy, hope, and inspiration. It’s what keeps nurses loyal to a unit and to the profession. ‘Nuf said!

My preceptor, a nurse for 30 years, prepares a patient for a scheduled cardioversion. The MDs come in to do the procedure. The MDs leave. As she wraps up, the conversation goes:

Patient: Thank you so much for everything.

Preceptor:  Oh, don’t thank me. I’m just the nurse.

Oh no.

Certainly I’ve said “I’m just a nurse” and have kicked myself before the words were even out of my mouth, but I’ve only said it a couple times and never in response to someone thanking me for my help or skills as a nurse. My goodness.

So it was cool to come across this nifty poster on The Nursing Site Blog. It’s by Suzanne Gordon, a writer, activist, and adjunct professor at UCSF (but not a nurse) who lectured in one of the MEPN classes. I’ve always appreciated how much the UCSF nursing school reminded us over and over — and over — again to recognize and resist all the ways nurses are devalued and to take charge of and promote our identity and strengths. This might need to go up in my break room.

An irony: Employees get cases of free beer every year and as prizes for various activities…yep, drink up and fatten the liver!

I love being in a small class again … and just in time for my flagging spirit. It’s a relief to talk to people who are going through some of the same learning and growing processes as I am. Some of them were nurses for several years before grad school, some come from totally different worlds, but everyone seems to be open-minded, outspoken, and willing to defy and resist the homogenization and impersonalization of regular hospital nursing. Or, maybe I’m projecting.

Sigh. I’ve been trying filter out my recent negative feelings, because well, complaining is a drag for everyone. But I’m human and this is nursing we’re talking about after all. I hope to write constructively about some recent challenges with hospital culture. I’ll try to work out the issues offline before posting them.

Saturday night: Several nurses and I are supposed to be practicing a new computerized system. Suddenly in a big flurry a manager says, “The word from UP TOP is that we need nurses to admit patients NOW.” Everyone jumps because the person UP TOP says so.

Some other night: I’m one-hour overtime because right before change of shift my patient goes bonkers and won’t stay in bed and is developing a gigantic hematoma. I let the supervisor know this after I’ve stabilized the patient and I’m asked:

“Why didn’t you let us know sooner?”

“Well I couldn’t, because my patient was confused, agitated, and bleeding and it took three of us to keep her bleeding under control.”

“Oh, but still…”

When I have questions or need help, I can always count on one particular unit clerk and a couple particular nurses to give me a withering look, shake their head, and mutter under their breath. I don’t understand them, and I’m done trying. I don’t give a crap where they’re coming from — they should be able to treat me as they’d want to be treated.

As a new nurse, and worse, a cultural outsider, I feel voiceless and helpless. And the jerks must know it — speak up to them? They’ll only gossip.

One of my strengths is my positive disposition, but will it survive my nursing unit?

Nurses meet the patient where they’re at…

As bad as it might sound to have to work every other weekend, it’s a relief compared to working on the weekdays. On my unit, the weekdays are always frenzied and sometimes terrible, but the weekends usually are a respite.

Tonight I worked with a nice, hardworking team and had stable, interesting patients. Of note were two patients who had never been hospitalized before.

**Mr. Lee (name changed) is a small, wiry elderly Chinese-speaking man with skin smooth as a baby’s. He came in, reluctantly, because of chest pain but has no significant medical history or problems. He takes no medications at home, has no hearing or vision problem, no dentures, no diabetes, nothing. “Wah!” (Cantonese for “wow”) was my response to him. He’s anxious about being in the hospital, agreed to come in only for observation, and declined the ordered medications that are “protocol” for our patients. I told him a little about the meds but I didn’t dispute him – after 79 years of not taking any meds, it makes sense that he doesn’t want to start now.

**Ms. Nelson (name changed) is a talkative woman with spunky short hair. She also came in reluctantly because of chest pain, has no significant medical history or problems, and takes no Western medications. She says she’s been successfully treating herself with complementary modalities and herbal medicines. She also declined the ordered medications. She expressed distress and anger toward the doctor who admitted her, saying that he has no conception or understanding of integrated or complementary modalities and that he scoffed at her anxiety toward the treatments he offered her. As she read her poetry, chanted her “Ohm”s, and listened to music, I understood precisely how alienated she feels from the way medicine and healing is practiced and communicated in the hospital and in our society.

For a split second, I felt “wrong” for not pushing these two patients to follow the hospital’s protocol of treatments and interventions, especially since I know that in my position I “represent” hospital-based medicine, but within the same split second, I realized that even though I’m a nurse in the system, I don’t need to agree with the perspective that medication and intervention are always good, for everyone alike.

In truth, I believe our society is too medicalized and our hospitals do not provide enough individualized care. As someone who has grown up in diverse family and social contexts, I believe in an integration of healing methods and perspectives. Some people might say that I’m working in the wrong field then, but suddenly I’m seeing quite sharply the “unique position that nurses occupy.” You hear about this “unique position” throughout nursing school, but it’s a great moment when you actually experience it. Certainly there are safety reasons to follow some protocols, but we can also use our judgment to fudge or work around them to “meet the patient where they’re at” — another banal-until-experienced nursing school mantra!

Example of a blessing (as a pathetic way of summing up the 1st half of the year): I’m happy to say that doing the Master’s program part-time was the right decision for me. Yay. Inititally I felt pangs of regret and wistfulness when I saw my MEPN friends walking merrily to class together. Or if they were harried, they were at least present to support one another. Poor me was usually alone because I had only two classes that most others weren’t taking yet…

But by the middle of this quarter, I didn’t mind feeling out of sync because I knew I was moving at a speed that’s right for me. While the NP classes and clinicals sound exciting, I’m content to focus on general graduate classes while trying to get comfortable with this wholly consuming identity of “registered nurse.”

I almost can’t remember the life of writer-reader-a.k.a.-dreamer. This isn’t a sorry or wistful statement; it’s just fact right now.

Maybe being a nurse doesn’t have to be all-consuming or so damn serious, but right now I don’t know how else to do it, if I want to do it kind of well.

One week ago
I gave a scheduled dose of 10 units NPH insulin along with a sliding scale dose of 10 units of Aspart – except that I didn’t actually give NPH; I gave Novolin 70/30, which I mistook for “NPH” and later learned is 70% Aspart and 30% NPH. This means I gave a patient too much rapid-acting insulin, which would bring his blood sugar down, fast.

Just as I was going home, the nurse who had “double checked” my insulin noticed that Novolin 70/30 was in the med room labeled with the patient’s name. She asked if I had given 70/30 or NPH.

The chain of errors immediately flashed before my eyes:
- I went to the Pyxis to get NPH.
- NPH was grayed out/not available in the Pyxis.
- I caught sight of a bottle of insulin on the counter with the patient’s name on it.
- I looked at the label and saw “NPH.” It didn’t register in my mind that there was also the word “Aspart” or that it said “Novolin 70/30.”
- I drew up the insulin in the med room and outside of the med room, asked a nurse to check my doses and co-sign.
- She didn’t see from what vials I had drawn the insulin.

And so there we were. Mild panic and disbelief as to why I gave 70/30. Didn’t I know the difference? The shameful truth is, I didn’t.

I notified the doctor, who was very nice. He ordered every-hour blood sugar checks for a few hours.

The nurse, while astounded by my ignorance, also kicked herself for not doing a real double check.

We also blamed Pharmacy for sending up Novolin 70/30 with the patient’s name on it.

I didn’t sleep well.

The next day I studied my insulins like I should have before. But I was also cursing and shaking my head – why is the naming of the different insulins so alike?

Thankfully, the patient was unharmed.

For a few days I was despondent and angry with myself and with the hospital system we work in. The errors were my fault, no doubt about it. But it’s also true that the hospital system, the “flow” as one veteran called it, sets the stage for us to make mistakes and take short cuts.

I’m still shaken up by last weekend’s mistake, but I’m also extremely motivated and determined to not make another med error again. I might even be a little paranoid now, but paranoia is probably a good thing in acute care.

Because I’ve always wanted this blog to help connect and support new and would-be nurses, I decided to integrate a robust “commenting engine” called Disqus (sound like “discuss”) into this blog. If you leave a comment, you’ll have to enter an email address, but your address will be hidden. You do not* have to “register” with Disqus to leave a comment. If anyone replies to your comment, you’ll get a notification, but your privacy will still be maintained.

I hope this feature will be useful to some of you. Thanks again for reading and chiming in once in a while!