kapachino

Tag: nursing

  • The Grind

    At work we do self-scheduling. Every month there is a calendar posted in the break room and we are supposed to fill out what we WANT our schedule to be for the next month by a certain date. Then our boss will take and finalize it, usually giving us what we want but not always. I have had the same schedule since I started working here, which looks something like this (repeating every two weeks):

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    (OMG I could never be a graphic designer. It took me entirely too long to create this image and it made me want to throw my computer across the room.)

    Well last month I forgot to fill out the self-schedule calendar, so my boss did it for me. She made one little shift: I am now off every other Friday instead of every other Thursday. This may not seem like a big deal, but my body is telling me that it is. “What are we doing at work today?” it’s saying. “Shouldn’t we be at home, cleaning the house like we do every Thursday?” I know I don’t always give my body a huge break on my days off, but at least I do let it sleep a few extra hours (till 7:30 a.m.! Such indulgence!) It’s just the difference of one measly day, but for some reason it feels like for-ev-er.

    Most nurses do 12-hour shifts, and only have to work three days a week. I thought that I would hate such a long shift (I did them during nursing school), so when I was hired onto the only remaining unit in the entire hospital that actually offered 8-hour shifts I was relieved. And, I must say, it IS nice to leave at 3 p.m. (who am I kidding…3:30 p.m. at the earliest) every day, saying goodbye to those suckers working the long hours.

    But the downside is that I have to come to work five days a week. And since I live over an hour away, it has started to wear me out. Many days David beats me home, which is depressing when you think about how he wakes up three hours later than I do and works approximately the same amount of hours. The thought of four blissful days off each week sounds like heaven to me now. I don’t care that the other three days I’ll have no time to do anything but work, eat, and go to sleep. It’s really hard to only have two days off in a row every two weeks.

    I’ve been thinking more and more about requesting to change over to 12-hour shifts, but I’m afraid to rock the boat. The compromise I’ve made with myself, internally, is that I’ll ask to switch whenever I get pregnant (which I’m not, FYI). That way I’ll have a good reason to ask for it.

    Hmm. When I started writing this post I didn’t intend for it to turn into a manifesto on the scheduling woes of nurses. But that’s how things go sometimes, and if I bored you then just wait till tomorrow…it’s my day off which is always super exciting. :)

    Anyone else have crazy work schedules?

  • #33. Get Promoted!

    I am just knocking these goals out all over the place! Now I need to work on getting some more of the easy ones out of the way so I can get cracking on the time-consuming and difficult ones.

    Yesterday I was promoted! I knew that I would achieve this goal, because it happens after one year of employment. But it wasn’t just like all I had to do was stick around for a year. There was a very lengthy process involved before I was ready to have my evaluation. I’m so glad to have it behind me! Now I am officially a “clinical colleague”.

    The evaluation itself wasn’t too intimidating; all the work had been done previously. I had to rate myself in about 50 bazillion categories and be prepared to give reasons why I gave myself that rating. My director and manager rated me on the same categories, and during my evaluation I read over what they said about me. For the most part the ratings were the same or one point lower/higher than I gave myself, and I had no disagreements. We talked about my goals, some classes I want to take, and my involvement in hospital committees. Then she told me what my pay increase will be, and when it takes effect. It’s very nice to work for a company that, as told to me by its lawyers during orientation, “will never run out of money”.

    I feel a lot more relaxed about work now, and with camp out of the way I have a lot more discretionary time. I’m looking forward to tackling some more home improvement projects soon, finding more furniture that we need, attempting to cook more often, and of course spending quality time with David, which is my favorite activity. :)

  • Diary of a Rookie Camp Nurse

    I’m back from camp and it’s good to be home. I’m going to attempt to sum up the week I had for you, and I’m going to start by getting a few points out of the way:

    >If you grew up going to camp every summer as a kid, then worked all summer at camp until you graduated from college, and even wanted to work full-time at camp for awhile, and therefore you are very excited about going back as the camp nurse, know this: it will NOT be the same thing. It won’t be what you remember. Especially if it’s a different camp than the one you grew up with and you don’t know that many people. Being the camp nurse is a somewhat lonely and isolating experience. You have to be available at all times, and if you leave your cabin (like for meals, or all-camp gatherings) you have to leave a sign on the door and take your phone with you. I realize now more than ever that I would hate to be a doctor because I would hate to be on call. I like knowing when my time is truly my own. So at camp I would end up spending long hours at a time alone in my cabin, but I couldn’t really relax because someone could come in at any moment.

    >If you think that you’ll go to camp and get a lot of exercise and continue your triathlon training, think again. My sleep schedule was thrown all off, so I was way too tired to wake up early and go run or swim until the next-to-last day. And early in the morning is the only time that was feasible to exercise.

    >It’s a lot harder to give meds to kids at camp than it is to give meds to adults in a hospital. I had to track the little suckers down. I found it easiest just to carry all the meds around with me in my backpack at all times so I could catch them. That, and a homemade first aid kit for fixing cuts and scrapes on the run.

    So anyway, I arrived at camp last Sunday night and promptly received my first lesson: be flexible. They couldn’t find the key to the nurse’s cabin. Turns out the nurse from the previous week (an older lady who has been there for years, and is kind of protective of her “space”) had kept it, along with all the registration supplies, on purpose so that she would have a chance to “talk” to me. Lecture, more like. She practically ambushed me at the infirmary and made me late to registration. Thank goodness I’m such good friends with the directors, or I might have made a bad first impression.

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    My home for the past week

    Registration went fine. Afterwards, I finally got a chance to settle in to my cabin. I organized health forms, made a list of food allergies to give to the cook, went over the schedule, unpacked, and read over the previous nurse’s notes. All of a sudden I started to get super nervous. I was thinking, if a kid actually comes to see me, will I know what to do?

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    The high-tech “clinic”

    My first patient (child? customer? patron?)  came at 11:30 p.m. that night, right before I went to bed. Keep in mind, I’m used to going to sleep at 9 p.m. and waking up by 5 a.m. I was tired. She claimed an upset stomach. I had to call her mother to get an OK to give her some Pepto, because it hadn’t been checked on the health form. (I was going to get to know this girl really well by the end of the week; I think she just liked the attention.)

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    My sleeping quarters. It’s not quite a Tempur Pedic, and no that’s not my comforter.

    That second day I was quite frankly overwhelmed with loneliness and homesickness, something I’m not used to. Mostly I missed David, and our loving home. At camp no one paid me much attention because they didn’t know me, and I’m not exactly an outgoing person. I started to get the hang of things, but I was completely on edge every second I was alone in my cabin. Also, I couldn’t shake the feeling that people were judging me based on how young I look. I’m 27, but people think I look anywhere from 16 to 22. Usually I don’t mind because I know I’m competent with what I do. But at camp, I really didn’t know what to expect. It’s probably silly, people probably weren’t thinking that at all, but it made me feel insecure.

    Thankfully, soon enough I got a chance to talk to my good friend Emily, who is the camp director along with her husband Bobby. Then the evening came, and I got to leave the confines of my little hole. I actually got a chance to talk to the kids and get to know some of them. And I actually got a good night’s rest.

    Each day was better than the one before. David came to visit for an evening which was wonderful. He tried to kidnap me and take me home with him, but I don’t blame him for that. :) The kids were really adorable, and I started to kind of feel like I knew what I was doing. I got to know some of the staff’s names. I started to master the art of taking cat naps, which meant I was finally able to relax a little. I began to enjoy mealtimes, mostly because I got to sit with Emily.

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    Bobby, Emily, Emily’s sister Camille, and Bobby’s brother Danny singing a song by camper request

    By the last day, I almost felt normal being there. I wasn’t exactly sad to leave, but there was a certain nostalgia about it all the same. Here’s a rundown of what I dealt with:

    • 13 upset stomachs
    • 12 cuts/scrapes/abrasions
    • 8 cases of fiberglass (from the canoes – apparently you can remove the shards with pantyhose? Wasn’t expecting to come across this one)
    • 5 headaches
    • 3 insect stings/bites
    • 2 minor joint injuries
    • 2 splinters
    • 1 nosebleed
    • 1 pulled muscle
    • 1 blistering sunburn
    • 1 case of a wood chip in the form of a spike being impaled into a kid’s knee. THAT was exciting, but rather easy for me to deal with. I tried to pull it out once, it wasn’t coming, and I sent him to a doctor.

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    Before I left I accidentally pulled the door off its hinges. Guess I don’t know my own strength! That, or it was just a really old door. Oops.

    Oh, and as for my week without internet? I missed it. A lot. I was not anticipating all the downtime and isolation, so I did allow myself one liberty: I downloaded a few apps from my iPhone. (Sally’s Spa, anyone? Love it.) But I got a lot of reading done, and the entire week was oddly relaxing, I think, if not mentally then physically. And at least I got to mostly stay out of the 100+ degree heat.

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    Me and Emily. She’s the one who’s pregnant, although this picture makes my stomach look swollen as well.

    So there you go; an honest account of my camp nurse experience. Now I’m going to drag myself away from watching reruns of Law & Order SVU and go run for the first time in a week and a half. As always, thanks for reading. :)

  • When Even A Looming Vacation Is Stressful

    On Wednesday I finally gave my presentation at work entitled “Blood Products in Oncology Patients.” I have worked hard on it for months and it has been hanging over my head for even longer. It went well, so I would have been relieved except that only six people showed up to hear it. Thankfully two of those people were my director and my manager. It’s almost impossible to get all the nurses from the unit to be away from their patients for 30 minutes to hear an inservice. But since I am evaluating the effectiveness of my presentation via a pre- and post-quiz, I need more people to hear it than six. So I’ll probably have to give it again, and again, and again.

    On Thursday I was forced to go to a boring class for half of the day. Afterwards, my unit gave a surprise baby shower to one of our patients, a 23-year-old girl with a heart tumor who was pregnant when she was diagnosed and had a C-section when the baby was 26 weeks old. He will be coming home next week, and because she is from out of town and living in an apartment, she has nothing for the baby. The shower was great. She cried, her mom cried. I almost cried.

    But afterwards I was told that I would be taking over the patients of another nurse who had to go to a meeting. All five were new to me, and the nurse I took over from conveniently left some of the most difficult work for me to do. I left work an hour late, my nerves frazzled. This morning she asked me why I didn’t chart assessments on the patients (which must be done once a shift). I told her that it wasn’t my responsibility to do this when I was only with the patients for two hours. The assessments are supposed to be done first thing in the morning, anyway. Apparently she complained to my director, but my director agreed with me. Victory is mine.

    After work last night I had a nice, relaxing evening planned with two of my best friends and former roommates who now both live out of town. But the day before our pastor informed us that we need to host a group of five teenage boys at our home this weekend for an event going on at church. David and I are involved in the event and are going to be staying with our groups from 7 p.m. Friday to Sunday after church, but my house was not prepared for this. So as soon as we got home yesterday David and I went on a whirlwind cleaning spree. It’s still not extremely hospitable, but at least when the boys throw their sleeping bags on the ground they won’t suffocate in dog hair. I was still able to have a wonderful time with my friends, but I stayed up a little later than I’m used to.

    That brings me to today. The church event starts at 7, and before that I have got to pack not only for the event itself, but for camp next week. Yes, I said camp. Starting Sunday evening I will be the camp nurse for Camp Good News down near Galveston. I’m excited about this because I grew up going to camp and my good friend Emily and her husband Bobby are the directors. But I also hate being away from David, and I’m nervous about going from taking care of adult oncology patients in the hospital to taking care of kids at camp. It’s a little different.

    I won’t have internet while I’m gone, so I figured it’s a good time to knock out one of my 101 goals: spend a week without internet except email once a day. I’ll have my phone with me, so I should be able to do the email thing. I’ll have to resist the urge to Twitter. It’ll be tough.

    So that’s why I’ve been silent this week, and it’s why I’ll be silent next week. Miss you, and catch you on the flip side. :)

    XOXO,
    Kathleen

  • #31. Take the Charge Nurse Class

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    I went to the 8-hour long class at Methodist the other week that supposedly taught me how to be a charge nurse. What is that, you wonder? Well, a charge nurse is basically like a supervisor. Except that we already HAVE a supervisor on our unit. Two, in fact: our director, and the nursing manager. The manager acts as the charge nurse Monday through Friday, and she doesn’t have a patient assignment. But on the weekends, we’re on our own. Someone has to charge, and that person has to have a patient assignment as well. For my weekend, that person is always my mentor Pat. But she’ll be retiring soon, so others will have to take over.

    At first, being the charge nurse doesn’t seem THAT hard. Here is a basic list of duties:

    • Assign patients to nurses at the beginning of the shift
    • Check the crash cart/defibrillation machine
    • Make sure there is the correct number of staff scheduled for the next shift
    • Be aware of the situation of all the patients on the unit by taking report, visiting each room, and making rounds with the doctors if possible
    • Help out the staff as needed and address any questions or concerns on the unit as they come up

    Okay, well maybe it does sound like a lot, especially if you have to take care of your own patients at the same time. But I’m not nervous about my ability to use my time efficiently; I’m nervous about dealing with conflict or issues with the staff. I am not an assertive person by nature. I dislike conflict. In fact, during class we took a test to determine our style of dealing with conflict and mine was a tie between avoiding and accommodating. I think that in real life I surprise myself and act differently than my gut tells me to, but I answered the questions on the test with my first instinct and this is what I got.

    The following weekend after the class I got the chance to put my newly acquired charge nurse skillz into practice. Pat was there for any questions I might have, but she let me charge. I had to deal with quite a lot of issues, but I came out alright. The part I liked about it was getting to meet all the patients on the unit and provide some care for them without the hassle of documentation. I liked feeling in the know about everything that was going on.

    But what I didn’t like was staff issues. Apparently I made a couple of mistakes in staffing, which were pointed out to me by my director when she returned. Also, there seems to be constant conflicts on our unit between the nurses and PCA’s (patient care assistants, which are like nurse’s aides). They all have extremely strong personalities, and I would rather just stay out of it. But as the charge nurse I have to be in the thick of it.

    Overall, I don’t like being the charge nurse and I don’t really want to do it. I didn’t get into nursing to be in charge of other nurses; I got into nursing to care for patients. I hate the politics of the workplace and I don’t understand why everyone can’t just do their job and get along. I’m going to have to be the charge nurse this weekend again, and I’m not looking forward to it. But this is what my unit needs from me, so I guess I’ll just do it and hopefully become a better person along the way!