Looking for "Nirvana".
A buddy from nursing school called to chat about professional life. We talked about salaries, vacations, co-workers, staffing and other nursing issues. I go through all these with all my nursing buddies. Hours of reflecting about this thankless job that few people wants to do.
There is no ideal work. It doesn't matter what profession one prefers to embrace. There will always be pluses and minuses. The key is to keep focus on the pluses. Keeping the passion for this type of work is also important. Today, I extubated my first patient in a year and a half. Since leaving cardiac surgery unit, I haven't had the chance to extubate anyone. My patient almost didn't get extubated as the person started to hyperventilate. I coached the patient to breath slowly and to be calm. After half an hour, the patient was calm and passed weaning criteria (the test done to validate that the patient is ready for extubation-removal of the ventilator tube from the trachea.) It was a satisfying feeling to help return a patient from ventilator to self breathing. Not a big deal but satisfying otherwise.
I doubt that I will ever find my ideal place of work. There will always be a negative. Co-workers criticizing my work is my weakness. Some nurses have a nasty way to tell others that we did a crappy job without realizing that you have given 110% of what you can offer. Nurses don't give positive feedbacks as much as they give negative ones. I get lists of "how come you didn't do this and that?" When I get report from this same nurse I will hear "Can you do me a favor and do this and that for me, I've been very busy and no one to help." This is the biggest crime in nursing. Nurses should be hang if they commit this crime. Manipulative bastards.
I'm learning to just let these moments slide by. I talk to one of the younger doctors at work and he taught me to journal the bad days and just leave those moments on the journal. Try to forget them and not let them control my life. I have a tendency to dwell with the bad things and just think of them in an endless loop. I need to focus on how good of a job I did taking care of my patients and not let other people's negative comments bother me. I have a long road ahead of me but atleast I started the journey.
Be healthy, exercise, eat right, drink lots of water and quit all the bad stuff.
Medical intervention can be both good or bad. When one signs that consent that explains to you that you can die in a procedure, hang on. You know you are in deep shit. After observing all the emergency procedures that needs to be done on patients, I think the worst is having a heart surgeon tell you that he is going to open your chest, harvest veins on your legs, bypass blood flow from your heart to a machine, pour cold potassium solution on your beating heart so that it can stop and he can do bypass surgery on your occluded coronary arteries. You will wake up with a tube in your trachea, a tube up your bladder, a huge catheter that measures pressures in your heart, three to four half inch diameter chest tubes in your heart cavity and lung cavity and draining blood to a container, three or four heart medications that is keeping you alive and clam. That picture will turn any carnivorous pig, cheese cake loving, potato chip poping, and ice cream slurping person to a vegetarian. har har har. 50/50 chance of meeting the Creator once you are lying there flat on a gurney or hospital bed with a surgeon on top of you explaining the procedure.
The worst fear I have is what if the nurse that is going to take care of me is one that has worked his/her 5th or 6th 12 hour shift. The nurse is tired and is thinking of take a break early. Oh maybe take an hour's break in the staff room while another nurse that is also tired on his/her 7th 12 hour shift watches the monitor sleepily. Arrgh, I've seen nurses like these. They are common. They have two full time jobs. Those half million dollar homes are hard to afford if you only work one job. Their kids need to go to private school and the new Acura/Mercedes/Lexus monthly payments are due. Make the odds of survival 25/75, in favor of the unfavorable. I think keeping healthy is easier than having to face the butcher, I mean the cardiac surgeon.
A buddy from nursing school called to chat about professional life. We talked about salaries, vacations, co-workers, staffing and other nursing issues. I go through all these with all my nursing buddies. Hours of reflecting about this thankless job that few people wants to do.
There is no ideal work. It doesn't matter what profession one prefers to embrace. There will always be pluses and minuses. The key is to keep focus on the pluses. Keeping the passion for this type of work is also important. Today, I extubated my first patient in a year and a half. Since leaving cardiac surgery unit, I haven't had the chance to extubate anyone. My patient almost didn't get extubated as the person started to hyperventilate. I coached the patient to breath slowly and to be calm. After half an hour, the patient was calm and passed weaning criteria (the test done to validate that the patient is ready for extubation-removal of the ventilator tube from the trachea.) It was a satisfying feeling to help return a patient from ventilator to self breathing. Not a big deal but satisfying otherwise.
I doubt that I will ever find my ideal place of work. There will always be a negative. Co-workers criticizing my work is my weakness. Some nurses have a nasty way to tell others that we did a crappy job without realizing that you have given 110% of what you can offer. Nurses don't give positive feedbacks as much as they give negative ones. I get lists of "how come you didn't do this and that?" When I get report from this same nurse I will hear "Can you do me a favor and do this and that for me, I've been very busy and no one to help." This is the biggest crime in nursing. Nurses should be hang if they commit this crime. Manipulative bastards.
I'm learning to just let these moments slide by. I talk to one of the younger doctors at work and he taught me to journal the bad days and just leave those moments on the journal. Try to forget them and not let them control my life. I have a tendency to dwell with the bad things and just think of them in an endless loop. I need to focus on how good of a job I did taking care of my patients and not let other people's negative comments bother me. I have a long road ahead of me but atleast I started the journey.
Be healthy, exercise, eat right, drink lots of water and quit all the bad stuff.
Medical intervention can be both good or bad. When one signs that consent that explains to you that you can die in a procedure, hang on. You know you are in deep shit. After observing all the emergency procedures that needs to be done on patients, I think the worst is having a heart surgeon tell you that he is going to open your chest, harvest veins on your legs, bypass blood flow from your heart to a machine, pour cold potassium solution on your beating heart so that it can stop and he can do bypass surgery on your occluded coronary arteries. You will wake up with a tube in your trachea, a tube up your bladder, a huge catheter that measures pressures in your heart, three to four half inch diameter chest tubes in your heart cavity and lung cavity and draining blood to a container, three or four heart medications that is keeping you alive and clam. That picture will turn any carnivorous pig, cheese cake loving, potato chip poping, and ice cream slurping person to a vegetarian. har har har. 50/50 chance of meeting the Creator once you are lying there flat on a gurney or hospital bed with a surgeon on top of you explaining the procedure.
The worst fear I have is what if the nurse that is going to take care of me is one that has worked his/her 5th or 6th 12 hour shift. The nurse is tired and is thinking of take a break early. Oh maybe take an hour's break in the staff room while another nurse that is also tired on his/her 7th 12 hour shift watches the monitor sleepily. Arrgh, I've seen nurses like these. They are common. They have two full time jobs. Those half million dollar homes are hard to afford if you only work one job. Their kids need to go to private school and the new Acura/Mercedes/Lexus monthly payments are due. Make the odds of survival 25/75, in favor of the unfavorable. I think keeping healthy is easier than having to face the butcher, I mean the cardiac surgeon.
