Saturday, November 3, 2007

it's 3:30 am, what are you doing?

so i'm actually currently at work, probably shouldn't advertise that but it's 3:30 am and i have no meds to give and everyone is alive and breathing so for the next 30 minutes i have nothing to do. and actually in 30 minutes i'll have a full 15-20 minutes of work and then nothing until 6:00 am at which point i will give my last medication of the night and then sit around and wait for the day shift to show up at 7:30. i truly dislike night shift. it's all a bunch of hurry up and wait.

so yesterday i talked to the PICU manager and she as formally as she could, she offered me the job. she told me i'd need to contact nursing recruiting to find out my new salary but i'm pretty sure it's more than i make now so that's kind of exciting. she did tell me that i'll need to become chemo certified which freaks me out. i am terrified of taking care of oncology patients let alone putting toxic chemicals through a central line. one thing that made me feel better though is that she told me that if there is ever an really sick kid in the PICU with all kinds of drips and pressors and tubes and such then they will assign 2 nurses to that patient. life is much less scary when you have a buddy.

work here is horrendous right now. the burn out rate for nurses is something like less than 5 years...i'm shocked it's that long. seriously, if our patients were always like the ones we have right now i would quit. i would be back in Ecuador before you could even say "¿Dónde fue ella?". last night i cried when i walked it every one of my patients' room. you really need to remember to pray when you work in a place like this otherwise....it would be unbearable.

well, my thirty minutes are up. i have extremely important work to go do...that will hopefully take longer than 10 minutes! it's all about killing time on night shift.

1 comment:

erin said...

I think you are doing a great job as a nurse. Takes a special person.... nice to have somebody you can trust when you are so vulnerable. I vow to pray more and you are always in my prayers.