Real World vs Ideal Setting

Three weeks ago, student nurses started their RLE in our area. Their presence has advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that some of your tasks are delayed because you have to assist and teach them about some nursing skills they haven't tried before. Sometimes, they actually cause confusion. I was once at loss when students approached me asking this and that. I then realized that when I was a student nurse, the staff nurses where our RLE was held probably felt the same thing. The advantage of it is that they lessen our tasks especially the vital signs taking which sometimes take most of our time especially that we handle 12-20 patients at a time.  When I was a student nurse, I complained about it. I didn't know I was actually helping a very busy ward nurse.

When I was a student nurse, I blogged about how staff nurses do not follow the ideal nursing care for a patient. I always see the bad side of their work. I didn't know that sometimes you can't avoid that to happen especially that we're working here in the Philippine setting where most of the wards are understaffed.

Yesterday, when I assisted a student nurse in feeding a patient through a nasogastric tube, I told her to push the blended (osterized) food through the asepto syringe's bulb. I asked her to do that because we still have a lot of patients to feed and medications to give.  I reminded her though that what I asked her to do is not the ideal thing (because the ideal method is to let the gravity do its work, you know what I mean) but when you're in the real setting, sometimes you have to think of strategies to finish all the nursing tasks in your 8-hour shift WITHOUT causing any harm nor jeopardizing a patient's safety. I always tell the student nurses I have assisted that when you care for a patient, treat him/her like a family member. Nurses save lives, not take away lives. And lastly, when you perform a nursing care, the ideal method will always be your priority... your own technique or strategy will just be your last resort.

This entry is to open the minds of student nurses reading this blog because when I was a student nurse, no one ever told me what happens in a real nursing world until we were exposed to public hospitals.