An old man walking along the beach at sunrise came upon a young man sifting through the debris left by the night's tide. Every now and then, he would pick up a starfish and fling it back to the sea. The old man asked him the purpose of his efforts. "The tide has washed the starfish onto the beach. They will die unless I throw them back." The old man looked around at the miles of beach. "There are more starfish than you could ever save. Surely you cannot expect to make a difference." The young man bent to pick up another starfish. As he sent the starfish sailing back to the water, he said to the old man, "It made a difference for that one."
This week we had our New Grad Pinning Ceremony, basically to mark the fact that we've been nurses for almost a year. I can't believe its been almost a year! It seriously has flown by! Sometimes I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. In honor of the near-year mark, this is the list of things I've been able to check-off my Nursing Skills To-Do List:
"Right now there is a nurse helping a woman become a Mom, a nurse holding the hand of a dying man, a nurse inserting an IV in a child, a nurse listening to an Alzheimer's patient tell a story, a nurse missing her family while caring for yours. In the minute it took you to read this, nurses all over the world are saving lives."
I love my job. :)
This week we had our New Grad Pinning Ceremony, basically to mark the fact that we've been nurses for almost a year. I can't believe its been almost a year! It seriously has flown by! Sometimes I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. In honor of the near-year mark, this is the list of things I've been able to check-off my Nursing Skills To-Do List:
- foley insertion (on both a male and female)
- NG tube insertion
- administer certain chemo drugs
- had a patient go crazy on me and therefore put him in 4-point restraints
- accessed and de-accessed a Mediport
- wound care (GROSS.)
- changed multiple ostomy appliances: your standard one, double-barrel stoma, loop stoma, stomas with a bridge, etc
- enema (not necessarily something I was all that excited about crossing off)
- postmortem care (also something I wish I never had to do)
- Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis
- coded a patient
- witness/deal with a seizure patient (i'm absolutely terrified of this)
- suctioning / trach care (also WAY, WAY GROSS. ...but i gotta do it some time)
"Right now there is a nurse helping a woman become a Mom, a nurse holding the hand of a dying man, a nurse inserting an IV in a child, a nurse listening to an Alzheimer's patient tell a story, a nurse missing her family while caring for yours. In the minute it took you to read this, nurses all over the world are saving lives."
I love my job. :)
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