Welp, I’ve been slacking on the blog. That’s ok…right? A lot
has happened since I last posted. We have a lot to catch up on…
I spent last month on a Mom/Newborn unit. There, I saw both
a vaginal and a cesarean birth for the first time. It was amazing. Seriously. Birth is amazing.
The first birth that I was present for was a cesarean birth for a third-time
mom. I was there to help the baby’s nurse. When the baby came, I was absolutely
dumbfounded. All of a sudden, there was another human in the room. It literally
brought tears to my eyes. The doc pulled the little guy out and handed him to
the nurse, who looked at me and said, “AMANDA helloooooo!! We’re working here!”
This made everyone in the room laugh and snapped me back to reality, where we
dried the baby off, warmed him up and gave him to dad.
At one point during that month I had the opportunity to
participate in a Code Blue in the emergency department. A patient came in,
transported by ambulance, in cardiac arrest. In the emergency room, I stood
like a fly on the wall watching doctors, nurses, and techs work together to
resuscitate the patient. It was incredible to watch. Everyone worked together,
and even though it was a very high-energy situation, it was not chaotic. The
nurse manager spotted me, noticed I was a student (the name tag and Regis
University scrubs are a dead give-away), pulled me to stand next to a tech and said,
“YOU. You are next to do chest compressions.” So I did. For two exhausting
minutes. We’re told in basic life support classes that CPR is exhausting, and
ohmygosh. That is not a joke. Between compressions, nurses check a pulse. Then
a tech stepped up behind me while I caught my breath. As we went to switch
after another two minutes, they checked for a pulse, and … there was one. Truly
one of the most exhilarating, mind-blowing things I have ever experienced. The
patient was transferred to ICU not too long after that.
Currently, I am in a Community/Public Health clinical. Very
different from any clinical I’ve been in so far. I’m in three different outpatient
settings: a diabetic education clinic, a wound care clinic, and doing home
visits to new moms. The pace is immensely slower than before, not that I would
say that it’s boring. These nurses get to spend more time with their patients.
They get to see more intimate parts of their lives, spend time in their homes,
and see outcomes happen over a span of months and years. It really is a special
area of healthcare that I could see myself heading toward sometime down the
road… maybe after a few years in some high-energy situation like the ones
above. In this clinical we also got to
attend a meeting with the public health department’s top communicable disease
nurse and epidemiologist about plans in case of disaster. This was especially interesting considering
this little thing called EBOLA that is on everyone’s radar.
So that’s where I’m at now. Half-way done with nursing
school!
