Six Months In

Ok.  It's been a bit longer than six months that I started work as a nurse at the Beckley VA Hospital.  There's been lots of good times, as well as challenging times.  I know I haven't written too much about my work.  Some of it is because of privacy laws and respect for patients and their families.  Some of it has just been events that would gross out people without the stomach of a nurse.

As an nurse, I see people at their worst, their sickest.  I perform procedures and interventions that are very intimate, to put it politely.   I aid people in normal body functions they cannot perform on their own, because they are too sick, or too weak to do so.  We take our body's normal functions that we perform on a daily basis for granted.  Being able to breathe, walk, feed ourselves, remove waste.  Our body's ability to fight infection.  Procedures I perform to help heal someone, often cause pain.  Placing an IV, foley catheter, NG tube.  Suctioning a patient, or disimpacting someone.

There are times when patients scream, yell, complain, or swing at me.  But it's all worth it.  For those good times.  Appreciative patients.  Those who are thankful, give a smile.  For those people I can help by providing effective relief of pain, physical or emotional.  A woman who I got to sit and spend an hour with, listening to her story.   Knowing I provided some form of comfort, of hope to someone is what keeps me going after the long hours and odd schedule (More on that soon).

Six months in, I've learned a lot, and become somewhat more comfortable with being a new RN.  But I'm starting to realized how long it's going to take to really feel comfortable, and it's difficult to see when that day will come.