8: Goodbye & Hello

No matter how many times we have to say “goodbye,” it never gets easier. As nursing students we get attached to our residents, and our residents get attached to us. The sacrifice, love, and care we put in those 4 months, create emotions that produce tears. We feel as if our work is incomplete; there are still mistakes to correct, tasks to complete, and care to provide. Saying “goodbye” is difficult, saying “hello” is just as horrifying. Our eyes are huge as we take in the glass double doors with a sign that says “Stop,” and a hand sanitizer machine below. I passed my first lesson; I performed hand hygiene to stop the spread of infection. First lesson completed a thousand more to perform. Each day will now be a test—tests that will include our critical thinking, skills, and patient care. Goodbye and hello—both difficult to carry out, yet through both phases will come forth amazing stories, education, and outcomes. With my stethoscope close to me, I am ready to conqueror new problems, and create new wonderful memories=)

7: Mistakes

"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity" (1 Timothy 4:12).

We are nursing students: experienced, fresh, and new to the medical field. We are still being molded into great nurses and we are still learning new concepts everyday (seems like every minute). However, we need to believe in ourselves. We need to mature in strength and knowledge, but we also need to grow in confidence. I struggle with believing in myself...and most of the time I find that others have more confidence in me than I do in myself. But that's not how life is always going to work. We won't have our professors standing near, and we won't have the ability to say "Prom (Professor)...what do you think about this?" We are young, and as long as we have this support group of students and professors we should be thankful for them and find support through them; but I also discovered that they won't always be there and slowly I need to mature into the nurse that they're molding me to be. Strong, caring, knowledgeable, and confident!

Thanks for the help on Friday Prom!!!

6: Humbleness & Patience

What I learned these past days at clinicals is that humbleness and patience are two traits that are needed in order to survive the day surrounded by sickness and pain. There are times were it feels like it’s human nature to pull chunks of hair out. It’s usually not because of frustration, because frustration will just make us grumble, or if you’re like me, you’ll hold all the frustration in until a small little detail will cause you to explode. However, we usually become frustrated because we run out of patience. Just a thought, even though you may be running around, moving from one task to the next, and dripping sweat during these tasks (which seem to be my mornings), patience will actually be needed more during these kind of rounds—patience isn’t necessary about time. Where patience is needed, humbleness is required as well. It’s not all about what we do or what we bring to the place. It’s all about the patient. Sometimes stepping down resolves more problems than it would be to take matters into our own hands. Many patients I encounter feel embarrassed, confused, and inferior in their little bedroom. They went from having so much of what we have in our lives, to feeling completely dependent on a stranger. It’s our responsibility to realize that there’s more to patients life then the life we know in our workplace. Where we chose to work will become part of our life, but most of these patients don’t willing chose to be in the situation that they are in. We could learn so much about our patients and how to provide healing, just by expressing the traits of humbleness and patience.

Time...Our Moment

Time could be defined as an instance or single occasion for some event. Yes, time is a period in which we live and follow in, but it’s also a once in a life-time hour, second…moment. And how we decide to act during those few seconds could honestly define our future. We live a life where we are put to the test everyday and where we’re persecuted from the inside, meaning our flesh has to die each day to the darkness around us. Because of time our body’s age, the older we get the more fragile or skin becomes; however, it should be the opposite with our spirit. Yes, our spirit should mature, but it shouldn’t become old and fatigue, instead it was marvelously designed to become stronger and healthier with the years that go by. As hard as times could be with different environments and different people, we made the choice to be the light. Oh, how I wish that every new situation that I encounter would be peachy; but I also need to understand that without challenges I won’t grow and I won’t learn, and time will just keep ticking.