My first week as Staff Nurse

It's been a week since I started my work as staff nurse. I wanted to blog every single detail of my day but I always get home really tired. Thank God, it's my off today. I finally have the time to blog. Now let me post it in bullets.

• My patient died on my last day as a volunteer nurse. Another patient died on my first day as staff nurse. Now, the staff nurses call me RIP girl. They think I have a jinx. After my duty on my first day, I headed to church to pray and ask for guidance. I also asked God to stop the jinx just in case I have one.


• I realized the importance of volunteer and student nurses. They somehow helped me lessen my tasks in terms of taking the vital signs especially that during my shift (3 pm to 11 pm), we regularly do not have  a nursing aide.


• I have a new uniform. It's quite bigger than my size. I think I need to eat a lot. Haha!


• Since I am a staff nurse now, my meals are sometimes skipped. I eat dinner at a later time. I always bring cookies and biscuits with me so just in case I don't have time to eat dinner yet, I can munch while working.


• I now double check all the things I do and sign on the chart. It's all my responsibility now.


• I made a few mistakes but I'm learning.


• One mistake I did is that I charged (c/o pharmacy) a lot of IV antibiotics to my patients. The desired dose is 750 mg. I charged 1.5 grams. I was worried how I will be able to solve that problem since the pharmacist reprimanded our senior nurse about the number of medicines I charged. Thank God, I was able to think of a solution right away.


• I need to lengthen my patience more. People are just so demanding these past few days. I understand that they want the best for the patient but I really think it would be better if they calm down their voice.


• Some of the staff nurses call me "admitera". Whenever I am on duty, we admit 2 or more patients. The last time I was there, I admitted 5 patients. Wow. That was quite confusing actually.


• I go home at around 12 am. I need to plan more strategies how to accomplish all the tasks in 8 hours. Again, I am learning everyday.


• The only problem that I have now is my thesis. I have lesser time to work on it now. I can't concentrate when I am tired. Help me God.

Tomorrow is my 8th day. I still have more than 500 days of work to attend to to be able to start working as a clinical instructor. I can't wait.