This is my journey from S.N to R.N

So, I’ve completed my first week on the floor. It is AMAZING. No joke. I am so in love with this type of nursing and am determined to get a job here as a new grad.

It’s been amazing to actually see some of the more critical aspects of diseases and put the pieces together between what I’ve read in my textbook or heard in lecture with the patient in front of me. I’m a very visual and hands-on learner. Sometimes, I can reread a paragraph over and over about the technicalities of something, but if I can see it or do something with it hands-on it’s as if I’ve got a photographic memory.

For example, I have read about respiratory and metabolic acidosis and alkalosis a bunch. I’ve heard it in lecture and it didn’t make much sense to me. Outside of being able to look at a gas and figure out which type it was, I didn’t know much more than that. So I could look at the gas and see  pH: 7.26, CO2: 60, HCO3: 22 and go “Alright, that’s respiratory acidosis.”

BUT after I saw a patient with that on the unit, I was able to remember verbatim from my preceptor about how they had acidosis because they weren’t able to blow off enough CO2 and the treatment would be to give sodium bicarbonate, which is kind of like baking soda, because it is a base. It is often given for metabolic acidosis, but is definitely given for respiratory.

AHHHHH! MINDEXPLOSION!! It sticks now! I’m just so excited!

I also saw 2 kids go on ECMO pump (a machine that acts as your heart and lungs), 2 code blues, one kid have “neuro storms” (where the brain was misfiring), several desats (where oxygen was needed emergently), an open chest cavity where I could see the beating heart under a piece of tegaderm, and much much more!

I’ll be sure to break it up into pieces and go in more detail. I just wanted to give a brief overview.

I’m on all night shifts this month and I’ve gotta say that I LOVE it. I may want to work night shift after I graduate! My preceptor is just beyond amazing. I want to be just like her when I grow up. She’s only been out of school for 3 years, but the way she talks you would think it was for a lot longer. She has this incredible wealth of knowledge and teaches everyone around her with a question (including undergrad pre-med students who were asking her questions). She explains everything while she’s doing it and I feel I’ve already learned so much in a week- my brain hurts! It’s really a match made in heaven.

To sum it up, week 1 couldn’t have gone any better!

Love,

Laney