On our last day of class, Carol said to us, “There is no way, going into this program, that you could have ever known what would be expected of you.” I thought to myself that this would have been nice to know two years ago.
When I started nursing school, I don’t know what I thought I would experience. I thought I was prepared—after all, I had my crisp navy scrubs, a fancy new stethoscope, a pocketful of black ink pens, double my weight in textbooks, and a hemostat, which I’m still not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do with. Anyway, that first day we filed into the classroom, some of us wearing our blue scrubs, and some of us scared that maybe we were supposed to wear our scrubs but didn’t.
Our first lesson was learning that nursing school requires you to work together to create a team within a very diverse group. Our class is no different—we have the jokesters, the smarty-pants, the smart alecks, the person who actually did the reading, the person who tried to keep us on track by encouraging us to just move on. Somewhere along the line, we became a peculiar kind of family. Somehow we all began to work together, and became people with the same passion—to help those in need and to make a difference in the lives of our patients.
Nursing school required us to not only accept but become interested in things that would make most people run the other way. We became fascinated by disease processes. We jumped at opportunities to see open wounds, broken bones, and gory surgeries. We learned to put our fears to the side and just go for it. Eventually, we had to let go of that little piece of ourselves that wanted to stay away from anything weird or gross, and replace it with a desire to learn, to see, to experience.
Nursing school took over every facet of our lives. If we weren’t in class, or clinical, or studying, we were thinking about class, or clinical, or studying. We began to use our assessment skills to scope out those around us, insisting that our family members let us listen to their lungs when they had a cough, or take their blood pressure when they were feeling stressed. We found ourselves trying to covertly study those around us and decide just what might be wrong with them. Somewhere along the line, we finally figured out what the teachers meant when they told us to think like nurses.
Nursing school required us to commit more things to memory than one might think was humanly possible. We learned about Carol’s world, and that things in Carol’s world are usually right. If that doesn’t work, trust your gut. We learned that when in doubt, raise the head of the bed and apply oxygen, and if that doesn’t work, a little Ativan might do the trick. We learned the names for a lot of things we thought we already knew the names for, like ringing ears, runny nose, eating a lot, and peeing a lot. We memorized lab values, diagnostic tests, and the signs and symptoms of more diseases than we knew existed. Just when we thought our brains were pretty much full, the instructors encouraged us by assigning another couple hundred pages of reading, and somehow we found room to store that in our brains, too.
We didn’t just learn about diseases, and the proper name for things, and the actual meaning of the ABCs. We learned to care about the people behind the illnesses. We learned to be strong in the face of adversity, and how to be kind when it seems like the most impossible thing to do. We learned how to keep our chins up, and admit when we need help. Most importantly, we learned to think like nurses.
It has been a separate journey for each of us, filled with laughter and tears, joy and sadness, and yet it is a journey we have endeavored together. Nursing school is definitely a one-of-a-kind experience, and I’m lucky to have had the chance to share it with these crazy people around me.
Once again, Carol was right. There is really no way we could have known just what we were signing up for…and maybe it’s best that way.
Emily Miller-Smith www.facebook.com (16 июня 2009 г. в 15:58)