The Student Nurse, The Experienced Nurse
April 13, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
A Student Nurse will spend an entire shift trying to re-orient the patient.
An Experienced Nurse will chart that the patient is disoriented and restrain them.
A Student Nurse spends 2 hours giving a patient a bath.
An Experienced Nurse lets the CNA give the patient the bath.
A Student Nurse values the chance to ‘work with the whole family.”
An Experienced Nurse avoids the entire family.
A Student Nurse always answers their phone.
An Experienced Nurse can’t find their phone on their days off.
A Student Nurse wants everyone to know they’re going to be a nurse.
An Experienced Nurse doesn’t let anyone know they’re a nurse.
Slight Miscalculation
March 30, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
As a nursing student who had barely passed bedbaths, I was on my second clinical rotation and had not yet mastered the concept that a unit was different from a cc. In the frenzied state that only a nursing student can know, I searched and searched for a syringe large enough for the 5,000 unit subcutaneious Heparin that I was scheduled to give. I went to a fellow student with a 60 cc Toomey syringe, the largest I could find, still perplexed about how to give the medication.
Eight years later, she’s still laughing and wondering how I ever made it through nursing school.
By Kathie DeMatteis, RN, BSN
