Monday, April 19, 2010

first day in the ICU

I was given a room number and a time. I showed up in scrubs, with my chai tea latte, looked around and thought "why do none of these other people look like orientees?" OMG, they were all the staff nurses and we were doing report! This guy says "hey you're with me today" and then next thing I know I'm signed up for bed 4. There's my name, next to the patient's name, as IF I have one single clue what I'm supposed to do! I thought, well, it's time to just get up and walk out of here because I have made a BIG mistake and I'm not about to kill a patient today!

Luckily, the nurse educator happened to be staffing, so he sort of showed me some stuff, intro'd me to the unit, made me do some competencies online, introduced me to people, and I went to a staff meeting on sentinel events (which included pizza). Basically, all I learned to do was draw blood off an art line, and even that I managed to screw up the second time.

Vents? Totally puzzling to me. 8 pumps with 8 meds that have to be juggled, if one goes up the other goes down, how will I ever remember that??? CVP pressures, why are we doing this again? Oh god, what have I gotten into. I feel like I never went to nursing school for a day. I'm totally lost.

1 comment:

Ó'Cuinn said...

Hey! I graduated from nursing the same time as you. Congrats on moving into the ICU! I work in a NICU, and I felt the exact same way starting too. It gets better!