Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Day 2 of Nursing School
Although I am not required to post this often I figured I would share my day today. We got out of class early (YAY!!). I had to go home and bring shorts to school for my daughter so that she can try out for volleyball. So I went home, got shorts and delivered them to the school. No problem. I can do this and then go home and read chapter 18. Since she is the one who has asthma, I think to myself: better check to see if she has her medicine since she is trying out for a sport. They call her to the office so I can talk to her - no medicine. Do you know where it is? No.. So I went home to find it. It's not in the usual location where we store it. I search for an hour. No medicine except for some old stuff that is out of date. After class today I'm not giving her old medicine for sure (although I never did before the class). So I called Walgreens and it will be ready in an hour. I looked one more time and there it was, behind a basket on the kitchen counter. So now I am off to the school again to deliver her medicine and collect her bicycle (which she rode there this morning)...At some point tonight I will get the new script from Walgreens, and eventually I might get to study. Hopefully, as the semester goes on and this gets harder, we will be more organized and the medicine will be in her backpack where it belongs.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
My Philosophy of Nursing
Nursing has been a profession that I have always admired. My mom was a nurse, then a nursing director and eventually the administrator of what was then a small privately owned nursing home facility. As a child, I spent many weekends at the nursing home if my mother was called in due to emergencies. When I was 13 I began volunteering there and at 14 I got a paying job in the Activities Department. I worked there all the way through high school and in the summers between my first two years of college. Even though I loved working at the Manor, I never considered becoming a nurse because I could not handle throw up. So I went to school to become a teacher instead.
I got half way through college and decided to get married. At the time I thought that I would take a semester off and go back to school. Life got in the way of school and I never finished my degree. Instead we decided to start a family. I was a stay at home mom and I worked part time at a preschool. It was the best of both worlds since I could take my children with me. My oldest two children benefitted greatly with this arrangement. My youngest child, LG, had RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus) when she was seven months old which subsequently caused her to have severe asthma until she was five. We spent a lot of time at Urgent Care and on the phone with several different nurses who worked for Capital Health Plan. I cannot fully express how much the help which we received meant to my family. She did not attend preschool on the advice of her doctor.
When LG went to first grade, I went back to work at the preschool. I realized pretty quickly that I really didn't love teaching preschool as much as I did when my kids were in preschool. Then something happened that changed my life. One of the kids in my class got choked on a conversation heart. I was holding her to see if she was going to be able to cough it up or if we were going to have to begin first aid and she threw up. In my shirt. And I sat on the floor and laughed because what else can you do when someone manages to throw up in your shirt. I realized that day that I had gotten over my fear of vomit.
At around the same time I had the privilege of watching one of my friends give birth. It was honestly the coolest thing I have ever seen. Giving birth is such a miracle to me. I knew then that someday I wanted to be able to have a job that would allow me to work in the delivery room. So the original reason why I decided to pursue nursing was so that I could work in Labor and Delivery. I still think that I would love to do that one day. But as I have researched nursing both by talking to friends and family and by searching on the internet I discovered that there are many, many different kinds of nurses. This appeals to me because I would love to have the opportunity to do many different things if I needed to. I really like people and I like to help. It is very satisfying to help people to figure out a solution to a problem that they might be having. A large part of nursing is taking care of others and being a part of a team which works together to make people feel better.
I have always thought that the root of nursing was taking care of people and teaching them how to care for themselves. To do this successfully a nurse must be able to assess the patient's needs and be able to decide the best course of action for that patient. There are far more nurses in the health care setting than there are doctors so nurses have to possess the knowledge and skills necessary to provide good quality care. Critical thinking is a huge part of this since if the wrong decision is made in caring for someone the consequences can be fatal.
I got half way through college and decided to get married. At the time I thought that I would take a semester off and go back to school. Life got in the way of school and I never finished my degree. Instead we decided to start a family. I was a stay at home mom and I worked part time at a preschool. It was the best of both worlds since I could take my children with me. My oldest two children benefitted greatly with this arrangement. My youngest child, LG, had RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus) when she was seven months old which subsequently caused her to have severe asthma until she was five. We spent a lot of time at Urgent Care and on the phone with several different nurses who worked for Capital Health Plan. I cannot fully express how much the help which we received meant to my family. She did not attend preschool on the advice of her doctor.
When LG went to first grade, I went back to work at the preschool. I realized pretty quickly that I really didn't love teaching preschool as much as I did when my kids were in preschool. Then something happened that changed my life. One of the kids in my class got choked on a conversation heart. I was holding her to see if she was going to be able to cough it up or if we were going to have to begin first aid and she threw up. In my shirt. And I sat on the floor and laughed because what else can you do when someone manages to throw up in your shirt. I realized that day that I had gotten over my fear of vomit.
At around the same time I had the privilege of watching one of my friends give birth. It was honestly the coolest thing I have ever seen. Giving birth is such a miracle to me. I knew then that someday I wanted to be able to have a job that would allow me to work in the delivery room. So the original reason why I decided to pursue nursing was so that I could work in Labor and Delivery. I still think that I would love to do that one day. But as I have researched nursing both by talking to friends and family and by searching on the internet I discovered that there are many, many different kinds of nurses. This appeals to me because I would love to have the opportunity to do many different things if I needed to. I really like people and I like to help. It is very satisfying to help people to figure out a solution to a problem that they might be having. A large part of nursing is taking care of others and being a part of a team which works together to make people feel better.
I have always thought that the root of nursing was taking care of people and teaching them how to care for themselves. To do this successfully a nurse must be able to assess the patient's needs and be able to decide the best course of action for that patient. There are far more nurses in the health care setting than there are doctors so nurses have to possess the knowledge and skills necessary to provide good quality care. Critical thinking is a huge part of this since if the wrong decision is made in caring for someone the consequences can be fatal.
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