Whirlwind first month

It has been an incredible journey this first month of work!

I have learnt a phenomenal amount, I have seen amazing things and I have really been nursing.

This week I did CPR for the first time. This was a truly amazing experience and the weight of attempting life saving measures was not lost on me.

I also began canulating and venepuncture this week. I was so nervous before my first attempt that I didnt sleep, I am feeling a bit better now that I have done a few.

For now I am on days off and am going to use them to catch up on sleep and do a few things for myself. I have been working weekends and I miss the family a bit, but I am trying to look on the bright side and find myself optimistically looking for all the good qualities of shift work. I am more available for my kids, I can usually drop them off or pick them up and I get to do homework with them. So even when I dont get to eat dinner with them, or tuck them in at night I am enjoying the time I have with them, and I feel like I have adjusted well to full time work.

The first 5 - clinical

Well I have sucessfully completed my first week of actual nursing. Oh my what a thrill. It has been a turbulant week, with more ups and downs than a rollercoaster, but all in all I am very exctited to be 'on my own' next week with my own patient load and things to do.

I was boosted by how well I was able to get stuck into the work this week, and I was also touched that so many patients commented on how thoughtful, caring and nice I was.

I was able to nurse such a variety of patients this week from respiratory distress, to cuts and bruises, tetanus shots, abdo pain, chest pain to terminal cancer patients. It has been such a learning curve but I am confident that I handled myself well.

The only negative thing I have to say about the whole week is that some staff still insist on treating the new grads poorly. We were called students too many times to count, and were even referred to as left overs on one occasion. I know it is small stuff but these are times of very high sensitivity and feelings of inadequecy. - I can only hope that in time they will come around. I hope too that we will all learn to just let it go without taking it personally.

Looking forward to next week!!!

The First Five

I have just completed the first five days of work as a registered nurse! Yeah!

We are now fully orientated to the workforce and have yet to see a patient. The department looks fantastic and over the next few months will be expanding dramatically. There are 9 graduates in the ED so the undertaking for all involved is huge. I have to say that the in house educators and clincial facilitators so far have been amazing. At the beginning of the week my stress levels were very high. All the paperwork and competencies that we have had to undertake this week along with the modules of work that is to be completed over the coming year really is overwhelming at times, but to their credit the hospital has put together a great team and we are all off to a great start.

I have leart a lot this week and my brain feels like mush. Most nights I have come home with a headache and a very high stress level, but now that it is all finished I feel excited to get into the real work next week. But for now at least I plan to enjoy the weekend off as it will be the last available for a while.

On the home stretch - or is it the downward spiral?

With only 7 days till I start work I am getting both nervous and excited. It seems like forever since uni finished and even longer since I did any work in the hospitals. I have been catching up with all my friends this week and we all seem to be saying the same things and having the same feelings about starting and feeling unsure whether we are up to the challenge.

I guess it is normal to second guess yourself especially when you have got so much time on your hands. I keep telling myself, get started, be safe, be positive and it will all come back to you!!!

Well off to get the school supplies for the kids today as they start their new school the same day I start work.

Facelift for my website - tell me what you think!!

I finally got my but into gear and gave my Student Nurse Web site a facelift. It has been a fair few months now since I have spent time updating the site, so I thought I would make use of the abundance of spare time I have at the moment as once I start work it will probably be a long way down on the "to do" list.

Anywho I would love some input into the content and layout. Tell me what you think, what is good, what isnt so good, do you have any suggestions or links to resources that you are willing to share with your fellow nurses and students? Here is the link http://home.iprimus.com.au/theboss6675/

Anyway my days have been consumed with making playdoh ( I have a great recipe which is below) taking the kids swimming (it has been a long hot summer), watching kids movies, organising school supplies and uniforms and trying to do a little reading before hitting the workforce with gusto!


Playdough

1 cup plain flour
1 cup salt
2 tbs cream of tartar
1 cup water
1 tbs oil
Colouring

Mix to thick paste in saucepan and cook until dough forms a large mass (3-5mins) stirring constantly. Cool and add colouring to desired effect while kneading through. Store in an airtight container.

Christmas, New years and getting ready to start work

Christmas and New years was awesome, and I was especially appreciative that I wasn't working (maybe for the last time in a couple of years) and that I could relax and enjoy my family. We moved house 2 weeks before Christmas which made this a particularly busy time of year for me, but looking back I am so happy to be settled and ready for new schools (for the kids) and close to my new work. We have spent the last 7 years in townhouses - due mainly to budgetary constraints, and now we are living in a fabulous 4 bedroom house with a separate family area for the children and we have adjusted beautifully.

Christmas was lovely - for the first time since moving to Brisbane we have had enough room to host Christmas for our family, and although some of my husbands siblings were out of town we had a lovely day, we did Breakfast (a fav of mine) then had a swim and a quiet afternoon. New years was very pleasant, we joined our family for a celebration and everyone (including the kids) lasted till midnight (just) and we had a quiet recovery day.

Monday this week (just about up to date now!) I went to work and picked up my uniforms (look remarkably like a tampon packet yuk!) got my payroll number and staff ID, and got my roster for the first couple of weeks, it is getting very exciting now, it is so close I can almost taste it!! Anyway just a few more weeks, time to get the kids ready for school, looking foward to covering all those books (NOT) and get into some sort of routine.

Graduation Ceremony

The week before Christmas we had our graduation ceremony. In previous years our Uni has held these ceremonies in the April of the following year (would have been 2007) but someone actually thought that it would be nice for us to all "graduate" when we actually finish uni instead of 6 months later!!! So we were lucky enough to have our ceremony early last month.

The ceremony and proceedings were amazing. Typically it was a hot day and we were sweltering under the cap and gown but even so the feeling of triumph and achievement was overwhelming. I got enough tickets for my husband, 2 kids, best friend and parents to all attend and I have to say this was one of the best days of my life. I was so utterly proud to have finished. To top it off I was awarded the Nursing Medal for the highest academic achievement in a bachelors degree - which was a total surprise and I didn't know about it until one of my classmates pointed it out to me. Anyway the whole night was stunning and I am so grateful to have been able to share it with the people I love the most.

Grad Ball - Retrospective

It has been a pretty hectic couple of months, so much so that I only just realised how long it has been since I blogged! We had our amazing Grad ball in early November which was awesome. This is a picture of all the "girls" with their partners ( I am 2nd from the left with my hubby). We had an absolutely fantastic time and consumed alltogether too much alcohol - exactly the point of the night I think! We all celebrated our victorious completion of our bachelors degrees and patted ourselves on the back many times. It was really nice for our partners to join in the festivities and someone even had a slide show detailing our journey over the last 3/4 years. Yeah for us!!!

Where is the 'delete blog' button?

A funny thing happened yesterday. I have been remis in my posting, and thought to myself, whats the point? I pretty much resigned myself to deleting my blog - but I couldn't find the button!! after searching around for a while another thought crossed my mind. What if my blog is an opportunity to reach out to the cyber nurse community - something which I may well cherish when I start work in the big bad world of nursing? So I made a decision. Keep the blog, but think of a new name (not theoretically a nurse anymore - not once the registration arrives) and give it a facelift. So here goes - this is the last post of the theortical nurse, next time the blog will look different and will have a different name too!