What Would Your Badge Picture Say?

‎"Because in the end it has almost nothing to do with the bike and everything to do with setting out to accomplish something that is intimidating, that is unknown to you. Something you know you have a good chance of failing at but doing it anyways and slowly but surely proving yourself wrong."

While the quote comes from the intro video of Project Pedal, it definitely pertains to my experience in nursing school over the past 17 months.  Talk about being able to complete some thing that was completely intimidating and unknown.  During graduation last week, the accelerated speaker, who wrote an amazing "commencement" speech, told us to take a moment and compare the person who we were in our badge picture with the people who sat before her.    

As we stepped into orientation, glowing from summer tans, plenty of sleep and of course excitement about the journey before us, very few of us knew what we were about to begin.  The first sign offs were terrifying as we had to demonstrate everything from taking a manual blood pressure to hooking up IVs to dropping NG tubes (let me tell you the last is way easier on a plastic man).  During our first clinicals, we mastered making beds with patients still in them and tried to discern which each lab value meant and its impact on not only the medical diagnoses, but the nursing diagnoses. IPOCs became the bane of our existence and only seemed to grow in length as the semesters went on (my last one for OB was over 35 pages).  

Taking care of critically ill patients at first seemed terrifying, especially coming off a psyc rotation, but somehow we got through it and actually grew to enjoy a patient's complexities.  Drugs became easier to pronounce and mechanisms of action began to roll off our tongues as the weeks seemed to fly by.  Giving injections became routine, quite the opposite of the racing heart/sweaty hands reaction when I gave my first.  SBAR reports and big medical terms became the norm.  You would have to remember to talk about normal person things during lunch with non-nursing friends as cool medical procedures and the color of poop are considered taboo topics.  

Somehow we survived the summer semester which was 30 hours of clinical plus another 12 of lecture.  The other 126 hours of the week were spent studying, studying, commuting to clinicals, studying and attempting to squeeze in some sleep.  While biking across the country was one kind of marathon, the summer semester was a whole other beast we had to conquer.  After weeks of no contact, my parents were worried I might actually be trapped under a stack of nursing diagnoses books somewhere in the undergrad library.  Thankfully I was one of most who passed all the classes and decided to continue as a full time student.  

From there, and after a three week break, we could begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  We had discovered how easy peds medication administration could be with brightly colored stickers and seen everything from a baby's first breaths to a patient's last.  Our public health rotation would be a breeze and because I was excited about my transitions placement, back to back to back evening rotations would be bearable (I actually love working the overnight shift).  

Throughout all of the hours of class and clinical, I came to realize more and more I was in the right place; who wouldn't want to join the ranks of the most trusted profession.  The last few years have taken me all over the place, but I am convinced it got me to where I was supposed to be.  The patients and their families truly made the experience and their stories, medical histories and more importantly their faces will be with me for years to come (one of the joys of being a student is you have fewer patients and get to spend time hanging out with them).  While I may not know everything out there, orientation will help fill in some of the gaps and as a life long student and lover of all things bookworm I am excited to continue my education.  

And so there you go.  While the person writing this post may have some dark circles under her eyes, and not be glowing as much post graduation, she is completely different than the person in that original badge picture and changed for the better.  Want to get an idea of what the last few months have been like, check out the 30 stages of nursing school from start to finish.

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