A day in the life...of an RN

It has been a little over a month since I started my job. I have been working for an RN for one month.  Time flies so fast. It seems like I should be getting ready to start school again, but instead I am working full time doing a job I absolutely love. It is pretty exciting. I will say that it is strange to have a job where I get to start a retirement fund and have medical benefits. The first day of orientation I felt like someone was talking to me in a foreign language... I kept thinking retirement?? I just started working. For those of you who didn't know, I was fortunate enough to get a job at University hospital in the cardiac tower. And for anyone who has ever been in that part of the hospital knows it is absolutely amazing. I am afraid I am getting a little spoiled by working there. :) It is an awesome place to work for so far. I couldn't have asked for a better job to start out at!

There is always a learning curve when you have a new job, but I don't think I was prepared for this. I can handle the patient care but all of the paperwork is insane. I am definitely struggling with that aspect. I know it will come with time, but it is kind of scary to be the one who is responsible for remembering to do all the charting, look at all of the MD orders, do the admission history, and remember to give patients all of their discharge information etc... I still have 4 weeks of orientation left so I am sure  hoping it will get easier.

My morning generally starts around 530. I get up and get ready for the day and head to work around 630. I like to get there a little early so I can sit in my car and take a minute to sit and breathe before the craziness begins. When I get onto the floor we have huddle where the charge nurses tell us some of the important things about certain patients on the floor. Then I go with my preceptor and we receive report on our patients for the day. We generally meet our patients, do our assessments, chart and give meds in the morning. We usually eat lunch and then take vital signs, reassess our patients, give more meds, and chart more. Most of the time it isn't as simple as vitals, assess, meds, chart. It usually goes something like "Okay Mr. So & So here are your medications. You are getting this, this& this. These are the side effects you need to be aware of." "Oh nurse... I don't take that medicine." This of course happens after you have opened all of the pills and have dumped them into the medicine cup...so while you are sorting through the pills trying to figure out which pill the pt. doesn't want to take the phone rings...a doctor is finally calling you back or the telemetry people are calling to tell you your other patient is going into a funny rhythm.... so then you have to check on that other patient to make sure they are okay. That is how the day usually goes. Literally whenever you are about to do something the phone rings or you remember you forgot something in the med room. 

I was finally starting to feel confident taking care of 3 patients by myself when my preceptor let me take care of 4 one day last week. I thought "okay this won't be bad... what is one more person to take care of. I totally have this." APPARENTLY the jokes on me because going from 3 to 4 patients is insane. It is nothing like taking care of 3 patients. It is so much harder. I have been SO lucky to have been with 4 or 5 different nurses since I started orientation because i have learned different things from all of them & they are all such amazing nurses. I think I am finally figuring out how I want to organize my day and what I feel comfortable with.

 In all honesty though... even though it is really hard & there have been 2 or 3 days I just wanted to cry in the med room I absolutely love it. It doesn't seem like work at all & I am still trying to remember that I am getting paid to do this now... [I may or may not have almost forgotten to clock out a few times..] When a patients family tells you that you have restored their faith in the hospital and that you have made all of the difference in their hospital stay it makes all of the struggles I am having being on "my own" 100% worth it. If I  could give any advice to people who are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives it would be to find something you are passionate about and stick with it because it is so worth it when you finally get there. 

So I am having weird feelings about not being in school anymore... while it is really nice I kind of miss it & started looking into different graduate programs this past week. I definitely don't see myself starting anytime soon, but it's nice to know I have so many different options when the time comes!