Last.

Last night was my last OB clinical, and I was sad to leave. I have truly enjoyed the experience due to my amazing instructor, who has a wide range of experience and tries so hard to let us see and do things we've never seen an done before. She is amazing. My friend said, "If I could have all of my clinicals with her for the rest of my school career, I would". I agree, she's just so wonderful, and I'll miss her.

The hospital we were at is not one of the magnet hospital in this city, it's a general hospital where the low income population and everyone else who has no insurance go to. I knew of the fact that I will not have an encounter with, as my instructor said when we started, "the Gerber baby family" who lives in the suburbs, 2 cars, 2 stories house with a front and back lawns and white picket fences surrounding it. It's an entirely new and different experience for me, but I'm so grateful I had the experience.

It taught me what being a nurse is about, that when you care for your patients, you see past what society has labeled them and you just see them as persons who need you and your care, and that is who they are. Their history may say they're drug addicts and the CPS is going to take their baby away, or they're brought from jail with one leg chained to the bed, or they're 37 weeks who've had no prenatal care and not taken any prenatal vitamins, or they're unmarried teens with their 2nd baby, but you don't dwell on that piece of fact. They don't deserve less medical attention based on what their history says, they still need the doctors and you, as their nurse to care for them. I love what my nurse said last week, "When you take care of a patient, you take care of them like you take care your family. You'd want them to be comfortable and you'd make them comfortable". And that is one of the things I will take with me throughout my career.

Last night was great for a last clinical day. I got to draw blood and saw another C-section, this time less traumatizing for the mother--and me for that matter. A complete opposite of the C-section last week, phew. The mother was actually my patient that was admitted to the triage. They were going to admit her to Mother-Baby, but at last decided she would go for a C-section due to a few circumstances. Then after the baby was out, the surgeons lifted up the uterus for us--4 nursing students lined up against the wall--to see and showed us the ovaries and what not.

One other thing to mention about that, is it was very nice of the surgeons to do that, but my friends and I still joke that they did so because they felt guilty about kicking us out of the OR in the beginning. It was all good though, we knew they were really concern about the amount of people in the OR as they were prepping and fear of contaminating the sterile field. So after one of them contaminated her gown when one of the staff accidentally touched her, she ordered us to "stay outside and come in after the baby was out or something". We were like "What?! Until the baby out?! What the heck?!" So we watched from the window until they made the first cut, and she actually sent a nurse to get us back in before we were going to sneak back in regardless of waiting until "after the baby out or something". Afterward, as we were about to start post conference, she came to find us and apologize for earlier, so that was very nice of her. See? Doctors and surgeons are nice, and I like them a lot when they're that way.

So that is it. That is the end of OB clinical this semester. Wow, I can't believe Junior II is ending in a matter of 4 weeks. Yesterday, I also registered for next semester as Senior I. It's surreal, time has really gone by fast. It seems like it was just yesterday that I started this blog to journal my journey (heeey, rhymes!) as I started nursing school.

Senior I. Dang.

Say what?!

Maybe I really am naive in thinking there is good in all people. I hear stories about doctors being rude, arrogant, and unappreciative to nurses--well, to anyone in general--but I've always thought "Really? Would people really get all high and mighty like that?" Not that I don't believe there are people like that, it's more like "I can't imagine why or how someone will act like that."

Then I met face to face with that kind of doctor today.

We were at the hospital's OB clinic this morning. There were several exam rooms and each doctor was assigned with a med student and, eventually, a nursing student. The doc I was assigned to seemed okay with it before we went in, even told me and the med student we could learn together. So, med student and I took turn with patient assessment while doc looking up info on the computer, and it was a normal regular visit.

But once the patient is out of the room, doc stormed out of the door to the nurses station announcing "I don't want a nursing student with me, I'm a doctor! Nursing students need to be with the nurses!" Then she went into a nearby room to find someone and just made the same announcement she just made to everyone that was in the area, where the nurses, staff, and patients were present.

As you can imagine, the nurses were not happy. They "saved" me from the wrath of that doc, immediately finding me another exam room I could be in, and apologizing for the doc's behavior, saying "They're just being their typical self, they know it's a teaching hospital but they just got big headed." Apparently said doctor was infamous for their attitude because the nurses have dealt with that doctor in the past but today was the last straw when they blatantly rejected to teach a student. Needless to say, that doc's boos is going to know something today.

I was put with the OB Nurse Practitioner afterward, and within ten minutes my friend came in with the same reason as me. Apparently, that doc went to her other assigned exam room, where my friend, a resident, and a med student had seen a patient. Doc came with "Is there a nursing student here?!" to which my friend replied "I am." Then doc said "Nursing students can't be with the rest of the doctors. Nursing students need to be with the rest of the nurses."

What the hell is that doctor problem?!

Look, I know normally in other clinical setting, the med students follow the doctors and the nursing students follow the nurses, but this is an OB clinic. An OB nurse practitioner more or less does the same thing an OB doctor would do during a regular OB visit, unless a more serious complication arises then the nurse practitioner would refer the patient to a doctor. The med students are learning more or less the same thing the nursing students are doing: getting history out of the patient, fundal height, fetal heart rate (the difference is that the med students get to do a vaginal exam whereas I won't without my instructor's being there with me). For that reason, the nursing students are assigned to be in the room with the OB doc, med student, and the patient.

Having said this, I know not all doctors are asshats, just like not all nurses are heaven sent. There are asshats nurses too, I'm not going to pretend my profession is the better one here. But as for today, this is what happened to me. I was fine about it afterward, sure I was taken aback by the attitude, but I felt more for the nurses on that floor because this doctor just pissed off every nurse there with their inconsiderate comments.

Now when people are talking about asshat doctors, I can say "Yeah, it happened to me once" instead of "Yeah, I heard about that."

Nursing School

Today is my first day and it went pretty well if I may say so myself.

One of the new things I'm getting used to is that each of my Monday classes is taught by several instructors, so it's sort of this tandem teaching thing going on. The course manager of the first class reminded me of Stanley Tucci, the other instructor reminded me of Colonel Sanders, and another one reminded me of Kimmie Gibbler of Full House, then the course manager of the second class suddenly started teaching in a Russian accent. It was madness. But funny. And made those lectures bearable. And you gotta love instructors who throw candies to their students before they start their morning lecture--well, they might do that just because it was the first day and they didn't wanna bring out their claws just yet....

I am not fond of when my Assessment lab is scheduled. The day it is on is fine but the time, ugh, forces me to drive in to school instead of taking the bus, wasting my gas and money for parking. Hatehate.

So one of the instructors mentioned above admitted to the effort of arranging lecture materials into a rap, in her words: "I have yet to compose the rap and the beat, but in the foreseeable future I see myself do the (makes a kinda DJ playing the record movement) wiki wiki...."

I think the whole class was just about to die of laughter at a Kimmie Gibbler lookalike attempting what she termed "the wiki wiki", whatever that is....