Nurses Notes

Today is Saturday, and that means I should be sleeping in. Instead I am wide awake at 5 am in the morning. So rather than engage in a wrestling match with sheets and blankets, I decided to get out of bed and be one with the stillness of the early hours of a brand new day. Wow, that sounded pretty profound. Or perhaps, profoundly unpretty. I like making up new words and sending spell check into seizures. Red scribbly lines all over my blog. Now that's when I know the creative juices are flowing.

It occurred to me that my insomnia may be due to the fact that I am going back to work today, for my first experience with the afternoon shift. I've never worked this shift before, and since I'm usually drowsy by 9:30 and unconscious by 10pm, I figure this is going to be interesting. May have to keep the caffeine flowing until my body has had time to adjust to this strange new world they call "afternoons".

Speaking of work, I am still in the orientation phase, but have been given progressively more and more responsibility as my preceptor deems fit. The first day was overwhelming, as most first days can be at a new job. At one point during the day, my nurse preceptor handed me her keys to the "med cart" and said "Okay, nurse. Time to go to work." Or something like that. I really don't remember her exact words as I held that heavy set of keys, my heart pounding. This was no longer nursing school, this was real life, and I was given not only the keys to the med cart, but all of the responsibility that goes along with it. Sure, I passed meds in clinicals while in the nursing program, but that was under my instructors license. Now, I was expected to do the same, with one major exception; it was now with the autonomy that accompanies holding a RN license of my own.

One thing that has been painfully obvious to me is how much slower I am than my mentor. She has got the "med pass" down to an art form, and smoothly sails from patient to patient as if she was born doing it. I think for every one patient I do, she completes four, no kidding. Now, I know that I am brand new and my speed will pick up in time, but for now I feel as though I am moving in quicksand. I want to be speedy and efficient now, which is a major character flaw for me. I am so impatient. I often jokingly say that when God was handing out patience, I decided the line was too long, and therefore didn't get any!

Because I am still technically in orientation, I will not have much more to add to this fascinating story until I begin my solo flight. I am both looking forward to it and dreading it, because I will no longer have my preceptor comfortingly by my side, answering my multitude of questions. 

No. In one week it's just me and that heavy set of keys. 


No wonder I have insomnia.