journey of a new grad rn

i'm a 23 year old male nurse in california. i decided to document my journey as i start my nursing career. i hope that you find this somewhat entertaining/intriguing/familiar... something. let me start by saying that i will be keeping my identity anonymous so that anything that i talk about will not reveal any identities because of hipaa and everything. anywho allow me to introduce myself- my name is "Arnold" I graduated with my BSN in may of 2012 from a california state school and am currently working for a small hospital just trying to gain a year or two of experience. I have been working for about six months now. I started off on the Telemetry unit but will officially be transferring to the Emergency Room.

[rn-ar-blog]

Beauty of working on all floors

The other day I was working in icu and one of the patients coded... I saw some of my ER coworkers coming down even though they weren't assigned to code blues.. Heheh they later whispered to me.. The only reason we came down was because we thought it was your patient... It felt nice because they got my back

[rn-ar-blog]

wahddafxup

not to toot my own horn.. but lately there's been drama going on around my transfer to ER. pretty much the charge nurses are fighting over which weekend rotation i'm on.. as much as i like the attention... no one has even asked me where i would like to be... haha oh well.. we'll see whats up... 

anywho this past weekend i didn't work in the ER. amazingly enough i was back on the Telemetry unit on saturday.. and by golly.. the census was low.. 8 patients... whaddafxup ? but that's okay because it was slow. HOWEVER our computer system went down and so it was paper charting through the shift... UH OH spaghetti oh's .. good thing i was doing a lot of charting during my preceptorship in nursing school. hallelujah haha i made it through.. good job me. 

on sunday they had me in ICU... and the census was 4 patients.. hahah man.. it was a pretty chill night i must say. no codes... haha nothing too crazy.. my patient started to desaturate.. so i just a little panicky... but it EVENTUALLY went back up.. her vent settings were already AC 12 TV 550 FiO2 100% and PEEP of 10. =/ but anyways. got through it. and now i have three nights off. gotta enjoy it! 

Happy Nurses Week by the way!!

[rn-ar-blog]

first week post


 1.

As i had mentioned above, i will be transferring to the emergency room. these past 3 months I have been floating to ICU and ER. which at first was the most terrifying thought in the world! but as i became more comfortable with the idea, the more comfortable i got with floating. when i first started i had the mentality that i would never want to be in the ER and ICU is where i want to end up. oh how things work out. I decided that ER is the place for me. So anyways last night was the most dysfunctional night i have ever worked in the ER. our hospital just recently (mid 2012) converted to computer charting however there is a doctor who REFUSES to learn the computer charting system. So in addition to processing orders, we actually had to input them ourselves… talk about time consuming and inefficient. So I took a patient who was to be admitted and the primary doctor was the doctor who yelled at me during my orientation because I couldn’t understand her over the phone… at 3 in the morning…when she sounds like she is barely awake.. anyways the ED MD was speaking with her and I assumed that she got fed up with him and she asked to speak to the nurse… oh joy.. that would be me. Haha but to my surprise, her hatred of that ED MD worked in my favor because I seemed like a genius to her. Haha so we got everything situated and I felt good because that primary doctor wanted my input on every single thing. So I felt accomplished

2.

In nursing school not once had I ever heard CODE GREEN .. but luckily when I oriented to ER my preceptor gave me the run down on what it was and what I should do to prepare. For my specific hospital code green is an incoming cardiac arrest. Anywho I was in ICU one night and right when I was finishing up my assessments I hear on the over head “CODE GREEN ER x 3” and I look at the board and I am code blue so as soon as the patient arrives to the ER it will turn into a CODE BLUE. I ran over to ER and something just came over me where I quickly assessed what I needed to prepare and so I jumped into action it was kind of fun. But anyway a minute or two later the patient arrived and we started working on her. I was doing compressions and maaaan oh man I’m still not used to seeing the chest go down that deep (mind you this was only my second time doing compressions) but I did what I had to do. The RT took over the compressions while I tried finding a vein to start a line because her line blew on the field. I mean I’m OKAY at starting IVs but add on the movement of the body from the compressions and that's a challenge.. I saw a vein and I just went for it.. got flash but when I tried to pull back for blood…. No luck. And then when I flushed it bulged! -_____- so there went what should have been my 15 minutes of fame. Ahha luckily someone was able to get one on the foot. Which I could have TOTALLY GOTTEN ; ) haaaa. But anywho we were working on her for a good thirty minutes and by the end of it. We got a pulse….. patient saved… it was when I got to my car that I realized how aweomse being a nurse is.. we literally saved a life at the end of a shift! Sounds good to me!

3.

to wrap this week up. I learned that the charge nurses of the ER are fighting over me – aka which weekend rotation will I be on. Although it is very flattering to be wanted in this way because of my work ethic… I wanted to stay on my weekend because I LOVE THE PEOPLE on my weekend..  sighhh I asked the nursing sup. This morning and she said it was moving toward me switching weekends. =( well.. hopefully they actually ASK ME before they even try switching me… OH and even better news! I’m going to be precepting new hires on the floor! Which is one thing I’ve always wanted to do… I’m so excited because I actually want to be a clinical instructor so this will be a little taste of that…

  well I’m off for three days! More stories to come!