Week 3: Passing the First Skills Test and Studying for the First Book Test...

This has been quite the week. First, I've been stressed out about a skills test we had on Thursday. Skills tests determine if you get to go to clinicals and if you fail the test, you don't get to go to clinicals. If you don't get to go to clinicals, then you get failed out of the program. So yah, it was a very intimidating test.

But I passed! Hallelujah, thank You, Jesus! I was so excited!

And our first book test is Monday. I'm not too concerned about it since I've been doing well on practice nursing tests and am starting to figure out how to reason and think through the questions and answers. Also, the information up to this point hasn't been very hard. But don't worry, I'm still studying like it's Doomsday!

Trying to think up what to post about, I couldn't really think up any new information. This week, we studied communication, documentation, and thermoregulation. They're all pretty straight-forward. This week was not nearly as interesting as last week. I decided to post about something we learned the very first week (actually, the very first class) of Nursing 111: Caring.

Care. Compassion. A gentle hand to reassure you. A smile and a hug to dry your tears and let you know everything will be ok. "She won't be in your life for more than a day, but you will be in hers for the rest of her life." (Taken from a nursing clip - link will be at the end of the post)

Nursing is an art; a delicate dance between caring and technical skills; the ability to not just help someone's physical condition but to care for them holistically as a person. As Florence Nightingale said, "what is having to do with the dead canvas or marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said the finest of Fine Arts."

On the first day of class, we were asked to describe a moment in our lives when a nurse cared and it made a difference for us. I remembered when I was 13 and my little brother was being born (yes, Mom let me come to the hospital and be there when he was born!). Mom was giving birth in the hospital's family waiting room (we might have waited a little too late to leave for the hospital...) and, due to confined space, I was asked to step outside the room. The moment I left, I burst into tears because I was scared - I'd never been around birth or pain before and didn't want to leave! Anyway, a nurse walked up to me, gave me a hug and a glass of water and told me everything would be ok. Then she stood with me until my brother was born and I could go back into the room. She could have just walked by the scared, crying 13-year-old but she didn't. She stopped and stayed with me.

So the final question is, what type of nurse will I be? Will I be thinking about the 400 tasks I still have to do in the next twenty minutes? Or will I take a moment to sit, listen, and be with my patient, practicing the "finest of Fine Arts?"

If you get a chance, take a minute to watch this five-minute video. It's definitely worth your time and will probably make you want to become a nurse!