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The hospital that I worked at had a lot of patients with mental health problems in addition to the actual physical problems that they were being hospitalized for. This made it extrememly difficult to have the “average” number of patients (7). I was just thinking about how this patient who I had was a “swallower” and had to be one on one with a sitter in addition to having a nurse. Nothing that was of size that could be swallowed could be in the room. This patient had come in because he had swallowed a pencil. They attempted to get it out with endoscopy and could not, so they were forced to cut him open and SURPRISE!! They found a watch, batteries, and coins. This was not the first time that he had been opened up to retrieve objects.
I believe it was that same night that I had the patient that tried to hit me in the head with a quad cane. Yeah. And it hurt. He was at least sane enough to be scared when the security guys came up. He thought he was going to jail. I was able to give him medication (per dr’s order) to calm him down. Haldol, that is. We called it Vitamin H. The vitamin that the insane folks were lacking.
I finally graduated from nursing school with an Associate’s Degree (2 year degree). I was ecstatic. But now I had to find a job. And wouldn’t you know that of all of the places that were experiencing a nursing shortage, I’d be in the one place that WASN’T having much of a shortage!! Yeah, I interviewed for three jobs and got two out of three offers. I ended up taking the third offer. It was an hour and a half interview. I got all kinds of wild questions which included: “What do YOU think the pillars of nursing are?” and “Tell me about a time when you have deviated from policy.” Yeah. Are these like trap questions or what?! I bombed the first interview having no idea of how to answer these types of questions. I don’t believe anything really prepared me for this part. I wish that my school had given a one day seminar or something of the like to help us with interviewing.
So, my first job was to work nights on a medical-surgical floor. I swore up and down I was not going to work on a med-surg floor and I was CERTAINLY not going to work nights. Guess what….I did both.
I finished up that first semester of the BSN program with a solid B average in my classes. I started into the second semester when to my delight, I got married and was moving. I think I secretly liked the fact that I had an “excuse” to get out of this particular nursing program. I liked the program, but really, couldn’t the instructors be any nicer than say, Satan?
Okay, so I left that program only to find out that I was NOT in fact moving as I had planned. Great. What to do now? So, I thought, can I possibly get done ANY quicker??? I applied to an Associates Degree Nursing Program where I could receive my two year RN degree. It seemed like a pretty good idea. I went to talk to an advisor who let me skip taking some kind of entrance exam that was required of the other applicants. This was because I had been accepted and successfully completed a full semester of a program with a little bit stiffer requirements than the one I was currently looking into. She also felt sorry for me that my move didn’t work out!
After a few weeks, I finally heard from the program and guess what…I got in!! I was so excited. Another journey would begin.
