Life of a Worker Bee

Well I have officially been working as a nurse for 2 weeks now!  Originally I was told that I would have to orient for 3 weeks before I would work on my own, but after one week, Clearfield told me that they thought just one more week of orienting would be enough for me because all the nurses I was training with said that I was doing an amazing job.  As for West Valley, I guess the DON/ADON (directors of nursing) got the same feedback so after two weekend shifts there, this weekend they had me work on my own!  Craziness!  

Orienting was kind of interesting.  Basically I would work with a nurse and help/follow them while they showed me what they did and tried to teach me about charting, policies etc.  Some of the nurses it really felt like I was in clinicals again because they didn't have me do to much but watch.  Other nurses would ask me to do all of their charting (which isn't easy when I don't know the patients).  Some nurses work so slow and others work really fast.  But I had some really awesome nurses that I worked with, helped me learn a lot and were great teachers. 

So at Clearfield I had talked with the DON about working short shifts (6pm-midnight) but they just did their July schedule and all but one of my shifts is a full night shift (6pm-6am).  So I oriented 2 night shifts.  I survived, but it definitely will take some getting used to.  Thank goodness Tacy has been taking some really long morning naps.  Friday night (6/29) was my last orienting and I worked with one of my favorite nurse co-workers.  She let me do everything and helped me with what I was unsure about.  I got home Saturday at 7am.  West Valley asked me if I could work there from 2-10pm on Saturday and 6am-6pm Sunday (on my own).  I agreed.  So I slept for 5 hours Saturday morning, then got up, got ready, saw Tacy for 15 minutes and went to work at West valley.  My first shift alone (I worked half of another nurses 16 hour shift) was a little hard.  West Valley does things a little different than Clearfield (even though they are the same company). But I survived and was so ready to go home and go to sleep.  I got home at 11:15pm (2315 to me now) and got ready for bed.  I was able to sleep about 4.5 hours before I had to get up and go back to West Valley for the day shift.  That shift went a little better, although at 8:00am a patient did fall/roll out of her bed onto the mat next to her bed.  So I had to learn how to fill out an incident report.  It definitely is interesting/nerve wracking now that I'm the nurse so when anything happens, everyone turns to me.  I had so many residents trying to ask me about billing, how to discharge, and the fall of course.  So I had to really take charge, be calm with assessing the fall patient and help direct the billing questions to the right people.  All in all I feel that I did well for my first 20 hours on my own.  

Needless to say, by the time I got home on Sunday at 7pm I was tired.  Tacy was still up so I got to put her to bed.  So over the weekend I saw my baby for maybe 30 minutes.  Not fun, but the paycheck will be nice. Brad has been really great this weekend allowing me to sleep when I can while he watched Tacy and being supper Daddy keeping her happy, doing the laundry, and going grocery shopping.  

Now I get to relax a little because I don't work again until Tuesday night (for a full night shift) but at least it is at Clearfield (I really do like that facility the most, plus they have a well working AC).

It has been in the 100s for the past 3-4 days, which has made even walking outside to the car miserable.  With our one car having no working AC, driving is no fun (whoever is with Tacy gets the AC).  Even with AC in a car, it can take a while to actually start to feel cold again and we show up everywhere pink faced.  Poor Tacy still has to sit backwards so getting cold air to her is a challenge because the whole car has to cool down first.  Good thing she is such a tough little girl.

After my long weekend, we are taking a few days off to go up to Island Park, Idaho to relax and enjoy a bit cooler temperature.  Just our little family will be up there so it will be fun to have a family vacation, to relax, and try to avoid mosquito bites.