Monthly Archives: November 2019

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Week Three is Almost Finished.

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Tomorrow will be my tenth day in my new unit. The first week was all class and computer stuff. I’m not going to lie, I seriously considered quitting after the first week. I cried in the middle of the day Thursday and the entire way home. I left floor nursing and am working in the endoscopy unit. So I left beaver town for the butt hut. I have never been so completely overwhelmed in my life. I had so much information given to me, I am surprised my head did not spin off my shoulders. On Thursday they had me scrub nurse and I was assisting the doctors who are both awesome. Anyway you hand them whichever wire they need and they insert into the scope. When they are done you pull it out into these nice loops. Until I tried it. I had the wires in figure 8’s, knots but no circles. I almost hit the doc once. Friday I started washing scopes. How hard could that be? It’s a million steps and takes my full concentration. (I realized on the way home I could do beaver town on auto pilot). So by the end of the day I kind of have it down but I do notice my left wrist looks a little red but it goes away.

Monday comes and it’s back to washing. The gal with me sees that I can pretty much do it so no longer stares at me but hangs in back for questions. It seems like I’ve had less water leaking into my super long gloves but my wrist looks red like I’m reacting to something. Tuesday I’m on my own and listening to music. I’m getting a little faster and not forgetting a step as much. I’m much more relaxed and not feeling like a bull in a china cabinet. Then Wednesday arrives.
Still cleaning scopes feeling invincible when we had a double. That’s an upper and lower on the same person. The upper goes in a red bucket and comes to me for pre-clean  which is usually done in the procedure room but no time to do it when doing a double. I pre clean,do what I’m suppose to and clean the hard plastic container. I decided I’ve progressed far enough I can put it away myself. I pick up the other four that are stacked together, put fifth one in and then proceed to drop them on my foot. It makes a huge crashing noise so when I come out they ask if I’m ok. I tell them what I did and doc asks if there was a scope in it. I say no and he says then all is good and smiles and his eyes sparkle. I look at my foot at lunch and it looks ok. At the end of the day the girls had me take my shoe and sock off to evaluate. It was purple underneath so they made me report to team leader (manager). She called workman’s comp and I was sent to urgent care. I went to the X-ray room and then the computer locked up and the guy had to call tech support. He ended up having to reboot the entire system. He finally gets them done. I go back to my room. The doc wasn’t there five seconds before he comes barging in with big eyes and asks if she’s seen the images. She comes back and tells me it looks like a fracture in one view but she’s not positive so she will let radiology call it and let me know tomorrow. I’m sent home in a shoe and can only stand 10% of the time. No cleaning scopes for me and my wrist is now burning and hurting. I diagnose myself with chemical burn. I put neosporin on it and wrap it like I was taught in the burn unit. I’m convinced when I wake up it will be healed.
This morning I get up and it looks worse. I show my preceptor who says I have to show my team leader. She takes one look at it and sends me to employee health. The employee health nurse takes one look at it and calls the workman’s comp gal again. Yesterday I had attempted to put in an incident report for injury but I’m not in system so I cannot report it. So workman’s comp tells me I have to report it in the system first so I call tech support. Tech support has to skype into my computer and sure enough he sees I’m not in there. He cannot add me and has to escalate it up. So I call comp gal back and tell her this. My team leader then attempts to enter it for me and she is unable to as well. So once again I’m over at urgent care without an official report. In the middle of all of this chaos the doc from urgent care calls to tell me the radiologist is unsure if it’s a new fracture or an old one. I have never dropped anything on this toe so congratulations I have a broken toe. I then remember Saturday is ice skating with the kids from camp Kesem so it looks like I’ll just be watching.
I am officially diagnosed with a chemical burn and given Silvadene cream to put on it. Now I’m banned from washing scopes which I told her I couldn’t do anyway because I’m banned from standing. Do you know how hard it is for me to sit. Every single person I worked with reminded me at least once to sit down. I will do whatever they tell me because I want healed ASAP and back to my orientation.
I really love the job but I need God to protect me from anything else happening. I don’t want them to cut me loose because I’m a big bull in a china cabinet liability.

Mole moral~ Change is good even when it involves a break and a burn!!

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I survived week one!

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Some random thoughts from my first week.
1. Schleprock is alive and well
A. I stepped on the water pedal not once but twice (same day) and squirted water all over the floor.
B. I didn’t connect the water tightly and therefore water squirted all over the doctor. He said hey I’m getting wet and was very nice.
C. I dropped a 45K piece of equipment on the floor on day three.
D. Almost hit same doctor in the head with a wire.
2. I realized I was on autopilot with my old job and didn’t even think about what I was doing. So being 100 percent focused for forty hours is exhausting.
3. The drive does not involve 270 which is fantastic.
4. Working full time is for the birds.
5. I’m way too hard on myself.
6. I love all the people I work with. They are happy and fun.
7. Everyone over the age of fifty who does not have a screening colonoscopy is playing with fire.
8. Learning something completely new is intimidating (see number 5) but also rewarding.
9. You can teach this old dog new tricks.
10. Looking forward to week two  What disaster can Schleprock avert?

 

Mole Moral ~ Change is scary but better than misery!

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New Job, Finally!

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It’s been quite a while since the last time I wrote a blog. It’s because I was so distracted with attempting to find a job. My summer sabbatical ended after I finished Camp Kesem Maine. I stupidly thought I would be back at work by the beginning of September. I had no idea how applying for a job had changed since the last time I applied.

It had been twenty-nine years since I walked into St. John’s Mercy Medical Center Human Resources and asked for an application. I filled it out and then handed it back to them. I don’t believe I even had a resume and if i had it would have been typed out on a typewriter. I went home and received a call on my land line to set up an interview with the head nurse, assistant head nurse and a staff nurse. I’m pretty sure they offered my the job either right there on the spot or the next day and I started two weeks later after I gave notice to my other job. Now let’s jump into what it was like this time.

First of all job applications are filled out on line and you attach your resume. I do believe when I applied for the Lutheran School Nurse job I did do a resume on a type writer as I did not have a computer. Microsoft Word and I do not get along so my friend Liz was kind enough to let me just input the major information and she straightened it out for me. After it is submitted then I waited for an email to see if they were interested in setting up a phone interview with a nurse recruiter. That consisted of a schedule in which I picked a time that best worked for me, when she was also available. The phone interview lasted approximately thirty minutes and then she would decide if I was worthy of having an interview with the nurse manager. Then I had to drive in and interview in person. At one of my interviews I was asked why I became a nurse. I wasn’t expecting this, nor had I thought about it in many, many years so out of my mouth came “I wanted to be a doctor, but my father refused to pay for medical school and my mom caught my sister and I playing with matches under the covers when I was eight and threatened to take me to St. Johns burn unit.” Later I remembered the real reason why I became a nurse. When I was fifteen I had an emergency appendectomy and ended up in the hospital for a week. I had two incredible nurses, Joe and Caroline and I wanted to be just like Joe. So I was all prepared to say this at future interviews and I was never asked it again. The interview went well and then I had to set up a time to shadow. This means following a nurse around on the unit I had applied for to see if I liked it. I loved it and then had to wait for over a week to see if I would be offered the position. It was by far the longest week of my entire life!

So now I have a job and I am like great I will get to start working. It would be another week and a half before I would begin nurse orientation. Before I could start the classes I had to agree to a back ground check and go to the lab for a drug test and blood work. I am still immune to hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. I was negative for TB. I just had the whooping cough vaccination four years ago so the only thing I needed was a flu shot which allowed me to whine about my arm hurting for three days.

After I passed all that it was on to five days of classes, computer stuff, videos etc. For me it was a very nice review but while sitting through it I thought I cannot imagine being a brand new nurse and be hit with all of this. I probably would have said forget this insanity. I’ll just be a hooker. These classes were called nurse integration and the managers are not called managers but team leaders. The charge nurses are called clinical support nurse. It gives the entire process a more family team feel to it. I suppose this is the type of stuff non medical jobs come up with.

So tomorrow I start in the unit and I cannot wait. However, it’s only for four hours and then I am off to another computer class for four hours. It’s how to chart specific for my unit and something I have never done so I’m pretty excited to learn something new. After that I will be working full time for six or seven weeks and then fear not I will be back to part time girl.

 

Mole Moral ~ Good things come to those who wait!