~an ordinary day~

The morning started out pretty routine, all patients still breathing with pulses. The thing about my unit is that things can go bad quickly, very quickly. A patient that seems completly healthy making you wonder what in the world are they in the hospital for can go flatline in two seconds flat. It just happens that fast on our unit. This is my world I come to expect it besides that is what they are on our floor for, they have the potential to go bad and some chose to do just that. Luckily since I have been working the patients who have decided to teiter on the edge haven't been officially my patients so I haven't been the one to discover such things I just help out in the emergency. That is up until two days ago. Once again all patients were perfically fine, one 5 days post open heart, one only one day post op, and one with just CHF. Now if I were to suspect one to go bad at any point I would pick the one day post op. That wasn't the case. I casually walk into CHF room to just peek around make sure everything was still fine low and behold the patient is blue...Im talking papa smurf blue. From what I'm told I handled the situation very well as I didn't freak the hell out and come screaming for everyone. I did get help from the other nurses, respiratory and a few others but I did it in a way to not scare the other patients to death at the same time which Im told doesn't happen too often. The one thing I love about my unit is the telemetry. I do have a fear of walking into a patients room and them be dead, but my little friend lets me know they do have a heartbeat so no surprizes well unless ofcourse the leads fall off but thats what alarms are for. So lesson learned a day that seems so ordinary can do a 180 all before your eyes, send your head spinning, and make you wonder what in the hell just happened and how it go that way in a matter of seconds.

~Work Work Work~

Question: Does it always happen that when you get comfortable at work something will happen to throw you off and prove to yourself that you really don't have a reason to be feeling all comfy and all???

Work is going pretty good, this is my last week on day shift then I switch over to 7pm-7am wahoo yeah that isn't all that exciting. I have gotten used to all of the day shift people as far as being good friends now and working really good together and now I am supposed to start over with new people who I have only seen maybe five minutes a day, but I guess I have already been in this situation once and turned out making lots of friends so its all good.

In other bigger news I come off of orientation next week!?!?!?! Holy shit how did that happen?????? I am coming off orientation about 6 weeks ahead of schedule and I am not sure how I feel about that. I think that is where my question comes in...I feel pretty comfy at work as far as time management assessments and my skills are concerned...I think if anything happened I could handle it except for one thing and this thing is pretty big...I do work on a cardiac floor and when it comes to someone coming in needing critical drips I haven't gotten ANY experience starting or titrating them. I have handled getting them up from the pharmacy because for some reason the pharmacy thinks its ok to take their time when someone's heart rate is up to about 200 to get us the drips so I can handle getting it but for starting and titrating I would be totally winging it trying to figure out what the hell I am doing. There are always more than one nurse on a floor...but...what if something else is going on and nobody is available to help??? Im not sure what I think about this issue because with everything else I feel comfortable with. I guess I should feel great about my coworkers and nurse manager thinking I am ready to come off of orientation this early, I am the only new nurse out of four others coming off early :)

So I prepared a little for night shift today. I went out and bought an ipod! I am going to start to try and stay up all night a few nights before my first night shift starts. Any advice for the transition to night shift from days???

~updates~

Its been a long time since I have posted here but it has been so busy I haven't had any time at all. So first of all about a month ago I took the NCLEX a week before I had originally scheduled to take it so I basically did no studying at all and still PASSED!!! That was one of the most stressful situations I have ever been though and I am so glad I dont ever have to go through that again. I am now working at a local hospital in the cardiac unit which seems to be going pretty good so far. I have been thrown to the wolves and its basically a sink or swim situation. I would like to think I have been at least keeping my head above water and doing pretty good so far lol
Working as an actual RN is so much different from clinicals in school. Sometimes I want to tell the techs who come to ask me things I dont know that it feels like I dont know much more than them lol It seems like I have learned so many things since working that at times it feels so overwhelming but I can say from seeing another new graduate just starting orientation and remembering how those first few days were I can say I think I have come pretty far.