Every night I work, I discover something new about my job. I'm a Registered Nurse at a 200-bed hospital in the Midwest. I started my nursing career 2 years ago after graduating with an Associate's Degree in Nursing. I knew nursing would bring me variety and challenge, which were two essential components of any career I chose. However, it wasn't until I'd been a nurse for a year or so that I started to love my work; being a new nurse was just that hard.
The paperwork, the patient acuity, the struggles with technology, the social rules of the unit, the physicians: all of it was overwhelming. Had it not been for the fact that I'd been through other career choices and had a family to support, I would have been out the door. Reasons for the nursing shortage were abundantly clear. Who would want to clean poop out of a confused lady's sacral pressure ulcer at 3 o'clock in the morning? And then by mistake call the not-on-call doctor two hours later only to be yelled at? Really, I was not paid enough for that. I went home in tears (kept carefully to myself until I made it to the car) many times.
Slowly, however, I started to see improvements. I noticed that most of the time I tried to start an IV, I could do it. Patients stopped asking just how long I'd been a nurse, and started to look at me with trust. I knew better how to manage pain and treat nausea, and how to instill confidence in my patients. At 3 a.m. I started finding myself caught up instead of struggling.
There are so many facets to nursing, and so much of nursing is obscured by our popular images of nursing: the caring lady nurse who empties your bedpan and nods her head obediently at the doctor's orders. Nursing in the real world is of course more interesting than the world of nursing we see on TV. It's terrifying and exciting, boring and demanding, intellectually challenging and sometimes cynical. Above all, it is essential. This is my exploration of nursing.
