Clinical Studies ~ on my adventures transitioning to a clinical career
After an adventure in the hospital a few weeks ago, I've become really excited about pursuing clinical careers.
Actually, that was the plan since I graduated and decided to take time off, but it's been slow going. In December, I had finally contacted a bunch of local hospitals to do volunteer work. Coincidentally timed with the recent hospital adventure, I finally got off the CHOC waiting list and got an initial interview with their volunteer department in that same week.
I had been slowly gathering information on clinical careers previously - just here and there, really. I had written to a few places about getting information on Medical Assistant and/or Nursing programs a year or two ago. However, this put me on the calling/spam list of doom. One of the darn trade schools would not stop calling our phone, even after my roommates repeatedly told them that I worked during the day and that they should call in the evening, after 5 pm, Monday-Thursday only. Even when I did talk to them, they kept calling for a while. And I wasn't really able to extract useful information because they were just trying to sell their program and get my money. They also told me there was a lot of hands on experience, including giving each other shots. (!) This scared me away for quite a while.
Turns out, shots don't freak me out that much. My mom had to give herself shots while she was on dialysis while I was in middle school/high school. And one of my Odyssey of the Mind coaches was diabetic (I probably spent a good chunk of every Sunday, and then some, in this guy's house for 6 years), so there was a lot of poking going around. But even with that, I couldn't stand the idea of injecting someone - My first aid experience mostly involved bandaging people up *after* they had split themselves open, and it's taken me a little while to get over the idea that you might have to (physically) hurt someone in order to help them.
About two weeks ago, my best friend melissafan ended up in the ER and was admitted to the hospital for a few days due to a deep vein thrombus turned pulmonary embolism. Thankfully she's doing much better now after her near brush with death (she said the part where it hit her was when we were moving up from the ER area to a real room on the 4th floor and there was an AED that had to accompany her on the trip just in case). And it also was a great experience for me to see how things operate in the hospital. For all the driving people to the hospital I did as a Health Ad, I was never close enough to anyone where I might be in on all the procedures of course. And I'm pretty healthy myself so I've avoided any complicated hospital visits. I'm not really sure where I was when my mom got her kidney transplant. I guess I must've been in class at the time my parents got the call that a kidney was available; I don't remember going to UCSF to visit her in the hospital, since it was a fairly quick procedure, and I'm not sure she stayed too long.
Anyway, along with seeing different medical techs and doctors and nurses in action, which was very informative, my best friend also had to give herself an injectable blood thinning medication for the first few days until her oral tablet medication kicked in. Well, that is, *I* had to give her injections because she couldn't do it herself. I thought I would be really squeamish about it. The idea of giving someone a shot freaked me out. But now, with 3 successful injections under my belt, I'm much better. (and 1 moderately botched one - but now I have the ever important knowledge of how *not* to give a shot, and thankfully it was a lesson learned with an understanding friend and not a high pressure performance for a stranger who was depending on my alleged skills)
The night nurse was super sweet, fun to chat with, and very caring. I could totally see myself being there for someone like she was. Oh yeah, and also giving some medication and stuff while I'm at it. I was particularly in a service mood because it was my best friend there, but even so, I do go out of my way to be nice and please and support and service others. [Sometimes this is disastrous, particularly with awkward folks and arrogant folks who turn into leeches or don't know when to stop taking my assistance and kindness, and when I'm no good at setting boundaries for myself] Nursing seems much more satisfying than doctoring - more time with the patients, and thus more chance to directly see the benefits to patients and the fruits of my labors. And hopefully nursing involves less stress and crazy schooling and slave labor [I may be completely misinformed here; this is why more research is required, and I hope to learn by osmosis and questioning while doing hospital volunteer work].
On a side note, Audiology is still in the running - I've had lots of good experiences with the audiologists at my work. But the lack of direct access is a problem, methinks. Optometry is also a potential choice - one of my cousins is an optometrist (and her husband is an MD, I think just general internal medicine), so she's given me some good perspectives. Optometry has the bonus of getting good deals on glasses for life. I visited an optometrist last week and learned that my eyesight really sucks. I usually have to get high index (of refraction) lenses, which can cost a pretty penny. I've also been reminded of how bad it is because I recently met a couple of guys whose prescriptions weren't as bad as mine. We did the whole glasses swap deal, and their attitudes about it were completely different (such as not necessarily having to wear their glasses all the time, which is inconceivable for me). I thought my astigmatism wasn't so bad... 2.5 isn't that bad compared to 8, right? I don't know why I didn't bother to realize that there was a different range of acceptable numbers for cylindrical vs. spherical corrections.
Volunteering at the Children's hospital sounds like it will be great. It's one of the few hospital volunteer opportunities I could find that actually guaranteed/involved good clinical experience, and not working at the gift shop or sitting at reception. Another hospital had called me a month or two ago, but they didn't have any night or weekend volunteer opportunities, which baffled me - hospitals usually run 24-7 since in-patients need care at all hours of the day. Thankfully the Children's hospital sounded like they were very willing to set up middle of the night shifts (like 1am-5am) for me if needed.
Unforunately, it's a looong waitlist and an involved process. After waiting 3 months for an interview, I need to wait another 2 months for an orientation. Then I have to go through another placement interview, then probably nursing volunteer training and whatever additional on the job orientation/training is needed. Along with getting TB testing and other shots.
In the meantime, I'm signing up at UCI. A couple of years ago I tried to set up an appointment there, but they mentioned something about being a teaching hospital and only having appointments at ridiculous hours of the day. like 9am-3pm only or something. So I figured they weren't a real functioning round the clock operation. Well, approximately 2-3 months ago I visited a friend in the burn unit there (they thankfully had survived the fires in Santa Barbara last year, but got severely burned as they escaped). Upon visiting, I discovered the hospital clearly had emergency services and other late hour operations. After a failed attempt to contact the volunteer department online, I finally followed up by phone with a real live person shortly after I discovered the CHOC process was going to take another few months. Later this afternoon I'm going to finish up TB tests and immunizations, so I hope to be up and going on that opportunity soon. Hopefully this means when I go do TB tests for CHOC, I can skip the 1st of the two-step TB skin test. I guess that makes it 2 visits/shots instead of 3, which I suppose is preferable. Also it means only 2 days instead of a week and a half to complete health clearance. Sometimes I can't believe I'm volunteering my time to go through all these hoops just to do something where I won't even get paid. But I'm sure they have to invest a lot in each volunteer so it's worth it to them to find reliable people. And I think it really will be a good experience for me so I can really see and understand what I might be getting myself into. Hopefully there will be more updates/thoughts to follow.
Actually, that was the plan since I graduated and decided to take time off, but it's been slow going. In December, I had finally contacted a bunch of local hospitals to do volunteer work. Coincidentally timed with the recent hospital adventure, I finally got off the CHOC waiting list and got an initial interview with their volunteer department in that same week.
I had been slowly gathering information on clinical careers previously - just here and there, really. I had written to a few places about getting information on Medical Assistant and/or Nursing programs a year or two ago. However, this put me on the calling/spam list of doom. One of the darn trade schools would not stop calling our phone, even after my roommates repeatedly told them that I worked during the day and that they should call in the evening, after 5 pm, Monday-Thursday only. Even when I did talk to them, they kept calling for a while. And I wasn't really able to extract useful information because they were just trying to sell their program and get my money. They also told me there was a lot of hands on experience, including giving each other shots. (!) This scared me away for quite a while.
Turns out, shots don't freak me out that much. My mom had to give herself shots while she was on dialysis while I was in middle school/high school. And one of my Odyssey of the Mind coaches was diabetic (I probably spent a good chunk of every Sunday, and then some, in this guy's house for 6 years), so there was a lot of poking going around. But even with that, I couldn't stand the idea of injecting someone - My first aid experience mostly involved bandaging people up *after* they had split themselves open, and it's taken me a little while to get over the idea that you might have to (physically) hurt someone in order to help them.
About two weeks ago, my best friend melissafan ended up in the ER and was admitted to the hospital for a few days due to a deep vein thrombus turned pulmonary embolism. Thankfully she's doing much better now after her near brush with death (she said the part where it hit her was when we were moving up from the ER area to a real room on the 4th floor and there was an AED that had to accompany her on the trip just in case). And it also was a great experience for me to see how things operate in the hospital. For all the driving people to the hospital I did as a Health Ad, I was never close enough to anyone where I might be in on all the procedures of course. And I'm pretty healthy myself so I've avoided any complicated hospital visits. I'm not really sure where I was when my mom got her kidney transplant. I guess I must've been in class at the time my parents got the call that a kidney was available; I don't remember going to UCSF to visit her in the hospital, since it was a fairly quick procedure, and I'm not sure she stayed too long.
Anyway, along with seeing different medical techs and doctors and nurses in action, which was very informative, my best friend also had to give herself an injectable blood thinning medication for the first few days until her oral tablet medication kicked in. Well, that is, *I* had to give her injections because she couldn't do it herself. I thought I would be really squeamish about it. The idea of giving someone a shot freaked me out. But now, with 3 successful injections under my belt, I'm much better. (and 1 moderately botched one - but now I have the ever important knowledge of how *not* to give a shot, and thankfully it was a lesson learned with an understanding friend and not a high pressure performance for a stranger who was depending on my alleged skills)
The night nurse was super sweet, fun to chat with, and very caring. I could totally see myself being there for someone like she was. Oh yeah, and also giving some medication and stuff while I'm at it. I was particularly in a service mood because it was my best friend there, but even so, I do go out of my way to be nice and please and support and service others. [Sometimes this is disastrous, particularly with awkward folks and arrogant folks who turn into leeches or don't know when to stop taking my assistance and kindness, and when I'm no good at setting boundaries for myself] Nursing seems much more satisfying than doctoring - more time with the patients, and thus more chance to directly see the benefits to patients and the fruits of my labors. And hopefully nursing involves less stress and crazy schooling and slave labor [I may be completely misinformed here; this is why more research is required, and I hope to learn by osmosis and questioning while doing hospital volunteer work].
On a side note, Audiology is still in the running - I've had lots of good experiences with the audiologists at my work. But the lack of direct access is a problem, methinks. Optometry is also a potential choice - one of my cousins is an optometrist (and her husband is an MD, I think just general internal medicine), so she's given me some good perspectives. Optometry has the bonus of getting good deals on glasses for life. I visited an optometrist last week and learned that my eyesight really sucks. I usually have to get high index (of refraction) lenses, which can cost a pretty penny. I've also been reminded of how bad it is because I recently met a couple of guys whose prescriptions weren't as bad as mine. We did the whole glasses swap deal, and their attitudes about it were completely different (such as not necessarily having to wear their glasses all the time, which is inconceivable for me). I thought my astigmatism wasn't so bad... 2.5 isn't that bad compared to 8, right? I don't know why I didn't bother to realize that there was a different range of acceptable numbers for cylindrical vs. spherical corrections.
Volunteering at the Children's hospital sounds like it will be great. It's one of the few hospital volunteer opportunities I could find that actually guaranteed/involved good clinical experience, and not working at the gift shop or sitting at reception. Another hospital had called me a month or two ago, but they didn't have any night or weekend volunteer opportunities, which baffled me - hospitals usually run 24-7 since in-patients need care at all hours of the day. Thankfully the Children's hospital sounded like they were very willing to set up middle of the night shifts (like 1am-5am) for me if needed.
Unforunately, it's a looong waitlist and an involved process. After waiting 3 months for an interview, I need to wait another 2 months for an orientation. Then I have to go through another placement interview, then probably nursing volunteer training and whatever additional on the job orientation/training is needed. Along with getting TB testing and other shots.
In the meantime, I'm signing up at UCI. A couple of years ago I tried to set up an appointment there, but they mentioned something about being a teaching hospital and only having appointments at ridiculous hours of the day. like 9am-3pm only or something. So I figured they weren't a real functioning round the clock operation. Well, approximately 2-3 months ago I visited a friend in the burn unit there (they thankfully had survived the fires in Santa Barbara last year, but got severely burned as they escaped). Upon visiting, I discovered the hospital clearly had emergency services and other late hour operations. After a failed attempt to contact the volunteer department online, I finally followed up by phone with a real live person shortly after I discovered the CHOC process was going to take another few months. Later this afternoon I'm going to finish up TB tests and immunizations, so I hope to be up and going on that opportunity soon. Hopefully this means when I go do TB tests for CHOC, I can skip the 1st of the two-step TB skin test. I guess that makes it 2 visits/shots instead of 3, which I suppose is preferable. Also it means only 2 days instead of a week and a half to complete health clearance. Sometimes I can't believe I'm volunteering my time to go through all these hoops just to do something where I won't even get paid. But I'm sure they have to invest a lot in each volunteer so it's worth it to them to find reliable people. And I think it really will be a good experience for me so I can really see and understand what I might be getting myself into. Hopefully there will be more updates/thoughts to follow.