Orientation. Disorientation.
Gosh. Well. I think the thing is, there's so much that I'm taking in, I'm not sure I have anything coherent to say about it.
I started at OFH (Other Famous Hospital, a very large metropolitan medical center) on October 11. There was a week of the kind of orientation where you sit in a room with other new employees, and a variety of people talk at you in 20-60 minute blocks--the first two days were all new hires, and the following three were just for nurses.
I learned that there are about 19,000 employees at OFH, and it's the second-largest employer in the city. I learned that if you are in a threatening situation, and you don't want to alert people to the fact that you're calling security, you can call the security number and ask to "page Dr. Johnson," and then the person on the line will ask you a series of yes-or-no questions to find out what the situation is, and send a security team right over. I sat next to a Puerto Rican pharmacy tech and learned some basics of Puerto Rican-US relations from the average-person point of view. I learned that I'll get paid weekly.
I got my ID, and in my picture you can just tell that I'm wearing my favorite purple maternity jumper, which I have to send back to Marina now, because she had the temerity to get pregnant herself before I was done using her stuff. (Can you imagine?) On my ID, it identifies me as RN, BSN, and a little part of me feels like it's lying, even though it's officially true.
But it's actually starting to happen--my transformation. I am turning into that hospital nurse that until a year ago I never thought for a minute I'd be. It's weird as hell. I have shifts where I'm so caught up in learning the job that I don't even think about it. But there are still occasional moments when I have that shock and feeling of dislocation. I'm watching my hands do something--spike an IV bag, set the flow rate on the pump, or punch into the Omnicell (= SureMed = Pyxis = electronic medication dispensing thingy) and get out some insulin and draw it up--and I have a fleeting alarm go off: WAIT! I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS. I'M NOT A HOSPITAL NURSE. And even though less than a second later, I remember that of course I know how to do this--and I can walk myself through how I learned--a slight feeling of unreality, or at least improbability, lingers. My whole self-perception hasn't caught up. I have trouble integrating it into a coherent whole. How is it that I can actually continue to be myself at the same time that I am this creature who wears scrubs, and tracks Is and Os, and knows which line of the triple-lumen Hickman you give the antibiotics through?
The other freaky thing is that I seem to be blissfully happy at it. That's even stranger, really. I haven't figured out how to think about that. Time will tell whether it's lasting, I guess. I've only done--let's see, I've already lost count, but maybe 5 or 6 shifts as a genuine employee. I'm still on orientation (and will be for several weeks to come) and haven't even gotten back to having two patients yet (though I did that a couple times while I was doing my clinical for school). So things could easily get hairier, workwise. I mean, they will for sure in some ways. The thing is, I feel ready for it. The other nurses are helpful and available, and I don't feel alone at all in what I'm doing. That's huge. And I'm also really grooving on doing patient care again. I love, love, love getting to talk to people, making a little relationship with them, making it so they feel heard and noticed and genuinely taken care of. I don't know. It's just so much fun.
I'm starting to think that maybe the novelty is also part of my ultra-Prozac glow these days. As much as I think that I hate being new at things, hate being bad at things, it is also true that I hate feeling stagnant and bored. I get all stale and cranky and in a funk if I'm not learning anything any more. And I guess maybe feeling a little overwhelmed by all there is to know makes me feel exhilarated. It means there's something to strive for, something that's bigger than me. I don't have that claustrophobic feeling of sitting around just breathing my own air. So maybe in a few years, once I kind of have this job down, I'll start feeling itchy again and ready to take on something new. It's actually a little bit reassuring to think so, because it jibes better with my own self-image than this picture of the happy nurse, padding blithely around the ward in her dorky shoes (among the younger, hipper nurses, Dansko clogs--preferably in cordovan--seem to be the de rigueur accompaniment to scrubs, but I find I am content in the ridiculously retro, insanely nursy white lace-ups I bought in nursing school), charting vital signs and emptying urinals with a bizarre sense of deep fulfillment. (I mean, really, wtf?)
I think I have about a zillion more things to say about my last few weeks, but they'll probably keep. I really want to empty wastebaskets and clean toilets, not to mention, um, actually brush my teeth, before I go pick up Cassie at preschool. (I have the hardest time structuring my days off, and I seem only to be able to get things done in a lurching, haphazard way.)
More soon.
I started at OFH (Other Famous Hospital, a very large metropolitan medical center) on October 11. There was a week of the kind of orientation where you sit in a room with other new employees, and a variety of people talk at you in 20-60 minute blocks--the first two days were all new hires, and the following three were just for nurses.
I learned that there are about 19,000 employees at OFH, and it's the second-largest employer in the city. I learned that if you are in a threatening situation, and you don't want to alert people to the fact that you're calling security, you can call the security number and ask to "page Dr. Johnson," and then the person on the line will ask you a series of yes-or-no questions to find out what the situation is, and send a security team right over. I sat next to a Puerto Rican pharmacy tech and learned some basics of Puerto Rican-US relations from the average-person point of view. I learned that I'll get paid weekly.
I got my ID, and in my picture you can just tell that I'm wearing my favorite purple maternity jumper, which I have to send back to Marina now, because she had the temerity to get pregnant herself before I was done using her stuff. (Can you imagine?) On my ID, it identifies me as RN, BSN, and a little part of me feels like it's lying, even though it's officially true.
But it's actually starting to happen--my transformation. I am turning into that hospital nurse that until a year ago I never thought for a minute I'd be. It's weird as hell. I have shifts where I'm so caught up in learning the job that I don't even think about it. But there are still occasional moments when I have that shock and feeling of dislocation. I'm watching my hands do something--spike an IV bag, set the flow rate on the pump, or punch into the Omnicell (= SureMed = Pyxis = electronic medication dispensing thingy) and get out some insulin and draw it up--and I have a fleeting alarm go off: WAIT! I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS. I'M NOT A HOSPITAL NURSE. And even though less than a second later, I remember that of course I know how to do this--and I can walk myself through how I learned--a slight feeling of unreality, or at least improbability, lingers. My whole self-perception hasn't caught up. I have trouble integrating it into a coherent whole. How is it that I can actually continue to be myself at the same time that I am this creature who wears scrubs, and tracks Is and Os, and knows which line of the triple-lumen Hickman you give the antibiotics through?
The other freaky thing is that I seem to be blissfully happy at it. That's even stranger, really. I haven't figured out how to think about that. Time will tell whether it's lasting, I guess. I've only done--let's see, I've already lost count, but maybe 5 or 6 shifts as a genuine employee. I'm still on orientation (and will be for several weeks to come) and haven't even gotten back to having two patients yet (though I did that a couple times while I was doing my clinical for school). So things could easily get hairier, workwise. I mean, they will for sure in some ways. The thing is, I feel ready for it. The other nurses are helpful and available, and I don't feel alone at all in what I'm doing. That's huge. And I'm also really grooving on doing patient care again. I love, love, love getting to talk to people, making a little relationship with them, making it so they feel heard and noticed and genuinely taken care of. I don't know. It's just so much fun.
I'm starting to think that maybe the novelty is also part of my ultra-Prozac glow these days. As much as I think that I hate being new at things, hate being bad at things, it is also true that I hate feeling stagnant and bored. I get all stale and cranky and in a funk if I'm not learning anything any more. And I guess maybe feeling a little overwhelmed by all there is to know makes me feel exhilarated. It means there's something to strive for, something that's bigger than me. I don't have that claustrophobic feeling of sitting around just breathing my own air. So maybe in a few years, once I kind of have this job down, I'll start feeling itchy again and ready to take on something new. It's actually a little bit reassuring to think so, because it jibes better with my own self-image than this picture of the happy nurse, padding blithely around the ward in her dorky shoes (among the younger, hipper nurses, Dansko clogs--preferably in cordovan--seem to be the de rigueur accompaniment to scrubs, but I find I am content in the ridiculously retro, insanely nursy white lace-ups I bought in nursing school), charting vital signs and emptying urinals with a bizarre sense of deep fulfillment. (I mean, really, wtf?)
I think I have about a zillion more things to say about my last few weeks, but they'll probably keep. I really want to empty wastebaskets and clean toilets, not to mention, um, actually brush my teeth, before I go pick up Cassie at preschool. (I have the hardest time structuring my days off, and I seem only to be able to get things done in a lurching, haphazard way.)
More soon.
posted by Rosie Bonner at 3:43 PM
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