Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Pedi in a nutshell

I finished pediatrics with flying colors! I think that rotation confirmed that I like kids and I want to work with them. They are small (to better lift you with my dear), compact (to better bathe you and change your sheets my dear), and they have a support/babysitting team right there at all times (to better have all of your basic needs taken care of my dear). It's a good deal.

The rotation at the hospital was fun even though they made no indication of what our role was. I gave a few medications, helped do a few procedures, and changed lots of beds, but not a lot other than that. I did a rotation in the IMC and PICU which was really interesting. They never let us do that stuff with adults for some reason. I worked with mostly young nurses but also a few seasoned ones. I never felt like an intruder like I sometimes did at all of the adult facilities.

I did do a rotation at a clinic in Cedar Park. That was merely OK. My preceptor had apparently had a horrible student the rotation previous to mine so she was a little jaded. The student had, according to her:
1. Spent the whole time texting and playing on her phone
2. Told the preceptor that she didn't need to do any of the work because she was planning on going into critical care
3. Sat in the doctor's chair/work space area and didn't take hints that she needed to move
4. Taken a two hour lunch
5. Done about a million other appalling things I couldn't believe.
The preceptor was so pissed that she talked to the student's instructor for 45 minutes and asked that the student not return for day 2 of the rotation. Damn. That is one overdeveloped sense of entitlement.

This made it easy for me, of course. All I had to do was take initiative and act interested in the work. I had it made. The second day I had a preceptor that was too busy calling her lawyer and spying on her soon to be ex husband online to care too much about what I was doing. I practiced drawing blood in the lab and gave about 15 Tdap shots. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't get much better than this.

After that we had a rotation doing school nursing. My preceptor was extremely nice and easy to get along with. She was a PICU nurse for 17 years and then had kids, so she decided to do school nursing. Shifted gears a little, you could say. One of the kids came in like three times in two days, so we had to call his mom. The teacher who had sent him apologized profusely. "I didn't know he had already seen you today," he said. "Kids are such whiners these days. When I was a kid, going home was a punishment. You were on a god damn lock down in the house. No games, no TV, no nothing. If I was too sick to go to school, I was too sick to do anything but lie in bed. Damned wussy kids." He was, needless to say, awesome.

The last semester of undergrad is upon us! I feel old.

Also, I never thought I'd say this, but I HATE lying around and not feeling productive. It's really hard.