noble

I was having lunch with a new acquaintance of my spouse recently. The acquaintance was a British woman, maybe in her 50s. She asked at one point what areas of nursing I was interested in, and I of course mentioned gerontology, among other things. The conversation moved on, but a little later she turned to me and said, "So, working with older people, that's something not a lot of people want to do. It's very noble of you, isn't it? Why do you want to do that?"
Luckily, I didn't say anything snippy, although I think I did say something along the lines of, "Well, it's not noble, really..." before launching into my spiel about how I've always been interested in neurology and psychiatry, and that the elderly are a great population to work with if you want to see a lot of neurological disorders. She looked nonplussed.
What makes this especially amusing to me is that she's spent her career hopping from one dangerous, war-torn country to another doing relief work of some sort. If that's not "noble," I don't know what is...
I guess I need to get used to this sort of thing. I'm hoping that actually speaking to me will subvert the expectations people have of me being a "sweetheart" or whatever. I may be a (future) nurse with a sweet face, a pleasant demeanor, and the voice of a twelve-year-old, but there will be no angel pins or stethoscope-bedecked teddy bears (with angel wings) in my house.
It's not that having a career that's good for society isn't important to me; it is. But there are a lot of careers that are good for society, and I picked nursing because I like science and I like fixing things and explaining things (and, yes, reassuring people) and because I'm pragmatic. I'll be a 3rd generation nurse. None of us planned on nursing originally, and none of us have been particularly sweet.
Frankly, the only way I'd be in this field for the nobility is if I were going to come out a duchess.

PLoS!

Sorry for the long absence!

Shorty Awards

Hey there, hypothetical readers. Nurse K at Crass-Pollination is up for a Shorty Award in the #nurse category. If you want to vote for her (which you totally should), fire up your Twitter account and go here. Make sure to list a reason, and vote by March 25th!

Change of Shift!

Hey, the new Change of Shift is up at Emergiblog! Hurrah! I'm also looking forward to getting my hands on Chocolate & Vicodin, which is a book reviewed in the previous post there. I would also enjoy some actual chocolate right about now. No thanks on the Vicodin, though.

(Speaking of narcotics, I like to read Penelope Trunk, and I seem to recall her tweeting once about being tired and taking a Percocet, thinking it would perk her up. Naturally, that did not turn out in the way she expected!)

Philip Glass is in the house

At volunteering this week, someone was channeling the spirit of Philip Glass, seriously. I went into his room and he was just sitting on the bed chanting numbers. Usually the same one, but occasionally he'd switch it up a little. Not sure what was wrong with him...

(There's an opera by Philip Glass, a modern, minimalist composer, called Einstein on the Beach, and large parts of it pretty much involve people chant-singing numbers over and over.)

I C U

Last week I had my volunteer orientation in an ICU; this week I get to do my first full volunteer shift there. The prospect is somewhat petrifying. I've volunteered in hospitals before, and a fair amount of my current and former jobs have involved interacting with outpatients, but I've only ever really worked with people who are doing fairly well. I mean, many of them were terminally ill, but if they were in a position to be talking to me, they were stable. But last week, I saw ventilators, I saw notes that this patient or that patient was unresponsive, I saw code carts on what seemed like every corner...

I'm a Nervous Nellie. Everyone who knows me learns that pretty quickly. I'm looking forward to doing this--while two of my three main career interests would involve working with outpatients, the third might not, and I'd like to get experience interacting with people who are actually, you know, sick. That being said, I worry about how to react in the event of something actually going wrong. For example, if someone becomes unresponsive and I think they're having a heart attack, do I hit the code button? Or the staff assist button? Or do I run screaming into the hallway? Now, probably what would actually happen is that some sort of alarm from one of the hypothetical patient's machines would start going crazy and people would rush in before I figured out what to do anyway.

Välkommen! 환영합니다! Mabuhay!

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a blog with a great first post; if I have, clearly it wasn't particularly outstanding (or I would have remembered it). With that in mind, I'll avoid trying to make this post really profound, and instead just give an introduction.

I want to go into nursing... I think. I thought for a little while that I wanted to become a doctor, until I did a cold, dispassionate cost-benefit analysis and realized that the training process was not worth it to me, even with the prestige factored in as a benefit. I have a BA in Impractical Studies, and I'm currently trying to decide between applying to PA school and applying to some variety of nursing school--accelerated BSN? BSN/MSN? Graduate entry RN/MSN? BSN followed later by an MPH? Or PhD? The options are dizzying. I'm pretty sure nursing will win out (if not, I guess I'll have to change the blog title to NonPAreil or something cheesy like that). As of right now, I want a career that combines clinical work with research, but I could do that even if I just get the RN alone, I suppose, so that doesn't really narrow my options down.

My main interests within healthcare so far are women's health (I'm more on the Gyn side than the Ob side), primary care, and neurology. That being said, I think I could be convinced to become interested in almost anything.

Right now, I work as a research assistant at a large university. I've been thinking about becoming certified as a CNA, just to get some practical experience (and so that I can stop volunteering! ha). I've volunteered in a couple different capacities, and I might be starting a volunteer position in an ICU soon, which should be interesting.

Things I love include but are not limited to: cheese, math, opera, and my spouse.