It’s been quite a while since the last time I actually wrote a blog. Here is a list of my reasons/excuses.

1. Post fifty kilometer run depression.
2. Post cruise depression.
3. Watching all eleven seasons of Bones on Netflix in seven weeks time.
4. The election insanity on Facebook which I cannot tolerate.

I have certainly had plenty of material, I just have not been able to motivate myself to write anything until today. A while back I posted on Facebook I had the best day ever and got a hug from Harry Potter. What no one besides those that work on Women’s Health knew was that Harry Potter is actually a nursing student named Josh who resembles Harry. He told me one day he wears contacts instead of glasses for that reason.

We have had nursing students on our unit over the years but I rarely interacted with them. Here is my list of reasons.

1. I usually don’t start until eleven in the morning and by then most clinical’s are close to over.
2. Students make me nervous because in my lack of self-confidence paranoid self I am convinced they will see that I am a terrible nurse.
3. I do not follow protocol or do things the “correct textbook way” and therefore feel I have zero business interacting with students or new nurses.
4. I feel I do no teach well and tend to do things without really explaining them because I have been doing it forever.

One of our night shift nurses was their clinical instructor and since I knew her, it helped me come out of my paranoid shell. Also this group of kids (I am so old, I could have been any one of their mothers) were the most go-getter group I have ever met. By this I mean, say a patient needed an IV started-instead of running and hiding (like I do) they would all fight over who would get to try. I am pretty sure one of the two guy students we had even cathertized one of our patients. It always seems weird to us but in the rest of the hospital male nurses take care of women all of the time. After all when I was just 15 I had my appendix out and I had a male nurse. His name was Joe and he is the reason I ended up becoming a nurse. This was back in 1983 when male nurses were very rare.

We were fairly busy on the Wednesday’s they were on the unit and I worked at least two or three twelve-hour shifts and the poor kids got stuck with me as having the patient they were assigned to. They saved my skin two different shifts. If they had not been there I would have been drowning in a sea of medication and craziness. So since they helped me I shared a lot of my experience and crazy stories from days gone by. I thought they may have enjoyed it but being paranoid and terrible self-esteem I wasn’t exactly sure.

One day Josh asked me if a drank in nursing school. I said, “no I have never been an alcohol person. He looked over at the girls like ha ha, not every one has to drink. So then I say “Wait a minute, I did smoke during nursing school, does that make you feel better.” The girls said heck yes. I then proceeded to tell them about quitting for 13 years, starting up for another four and quitting ever since. I don’t think I was at school a week before I found out my soon to be best friends Gena and Leah were sneaking off to the parking lot smoking. They didn’t want me to know because they thought I would get mad. I was like heck no give me a cigarette and so it began.

So when there last day of clinical’s came our census was fairly high so I asked them to put me on a twelve again. I gave them all a card with CR’s words of wisdom and a QT card. That way the drinkers could purchase alcohol, the smokers could purchase cigs, and the rest soda, junk food or gas. So that is how I ended up getting a hug from Harry Potter. They ended up giving me a really nice Starbucks cup and then a card which was the best gift ever. Apparently my crazy stories and my non text-book techniques turned out to be quite helpful. Words cannot express how much I enjoyed each and every one of these kids. I am not sure there will ever be another clinical group as amazing as they were.

Mole Moral ~ Nursing school is just as ignorant and difficult today as it was thirty years ago. I am convinced the goal is to make one as miserable as possible with the goal to weed out the weak!