Friday, July 06, 2012

holy ***ing **** i'm a nurse: week one

Oh hey there. It's been awhile. To pick up where we left off . . . I'm officially Nurse Gina now. I got back from China and then a whole bunch of stuff happened and then I got my RN license and an ID badge with letters after my name (and a new pair of Danksos, naturally) and now I have a job on a psychiatric unit where I'm walking around trying to look like I know what I'm doing.

Highlights from Week One:

1. I got through two days of general corporate orientation (i.e., lots and lots of PowerPoint presentations) with only minor back pain that lasted the next two days, and without doing anything unprofessional like passing a note to a friend saying "shoot me now" during a lecture on Professionalism, not that I felt any sort of impulse to do that, or anything.  

2. I ran into friends from nursing school at nursing school during lunch time, even though none of us had any legitimate reason to be at nursing school (and the food is nothing special). We are like little fledglings, not quite ready to fully leave the nest.

3. The first day on my new unit was a success, aside from the part where during morning report my cell phone alarm clock went off, TWICE (I was so mortified the first time it went off that I failed to turn it off and just hit snooze, apparently, as that is what my thumb is most used to doing), and I of course happened to be sitting next to the Nurse Educator and the attending physician.

4. I GET TO WEAR A LAB COAT. I'm sorry, but nothing makes me feel more badass than wearing a lab coat. Okay, maybe wearing OR scrubs. Or Carhartt overalls. Or a spacesuit, presumably, though I imagine you don't feel very badass when you're wearing a spacesuit and you have to pee. 

5. I sat with the patients and ate a banana and a hard-boiled egg (we are encouraged to eat the hospital food with the patients during mealtimes) and introduced myself and started conversations with several of them even though I felt totally awkward and shy. 

6. Guided group stretching time during Fresh Air Break! I love psych.

7. Things said to me today that I enjoyed:

New Coworker: You look a lot like a tech we just hired on [other unit].
Me: Yeah?
New Coworker: Yeah. But she's thicker.
Me: Oh! [nervous laughter]
Me [silently to myself]: I love you.

Patient: Where are you from?
Me: Wisconsin.
Patient: Do they have a lot of murders in Wisconsin?
Me: Oh, uh, I dunno, not that many, I don't think.*

*I do not purport to know anything about the murder statistics in Wisconsin. But something tells me Homicide: Sheboygan would be a lot less interesting than Homicide: Life on the Street, which I only recently learned takes place in good ol' B'more.

8. This newfound Career business has inspired me to live my life with a little more self-discipline. On Monday, I resolved that I would go to two yoga classes per week (at least), and write for 30 minutes a day (at least). I figured these were SMART goals, which in the world of psych nursing means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. I even created a measurement system, with timeframes. It is now Friday. 


Baby steps.

2 comments:

Nick said...

Does the greyed-out bit mean the same as a check mark or does it mean that writing isn't even an option on Sunday?

Also, your blog doesn't seem to have an RSS feed?

Gina said...

It means I started keeping track on Monday, but I like your version better.

Sadly, I think I'm too dumb to address to the RSS feed issue.