Cindy the SRNA - Week 4
Wow, this shit is going by fast!
I'll be out of the creepy house and suffering in Rusk before I know it.
This week was relatively unremarkable except for 2 things.
I was all excited about Ortho day (thursday) until Wednesday afternoon. One of the 2 other girls who are with me, Julie, came into Same Day (where we check charts to make anes plans for the next day) in tears. Jaimee (the other girl from my class) and I were like "WTF Julie, what happened?!"
The MDA director, who has always been very nice to me, hell, he's the one doing blocks with me on ortho day, has been digging into Julie. Julie lives up there, worked there as an RN, and has made no secret about wanting to work there as a CRNA.
Unfortunately, it's been a bit bumpy for her. The Head of the Medical Office complained that Julie was rude because she came to pick up her badge 3 days early (we had no idea when to pick up the damn things. No one told us shit) and this bitch made a huge stink with our professors about that. Strike 1.
The head MDA has been asking her these really odd questions. Such as, how does 3LNC affect your Minute Volume? (It doesn't. MV is a function of resp rate and tidal volume) I shit you not when I say no one knows the answers to these questions. Us, our professors, the other MDAs and CRNAs at this place, NO ONE.
So, since Julie can't answer these questions, this dude called Julie and our clinical coordinator, Dr Steve, into the office on Wednesday and told Julie that she's doing great technically but she doesn't have the knowledge base and if he was in charge, he'd FAIL her.
So, that's Strike 2 for her? I hope not. Dr Steve completely disagrees, but the jerk is his boss, so we'll see what happens with all this. But I'd hate for her to get in trouble again. We've only been there for a month! I'm rotating but she and Jaimee aren't! They're doing the entire 15 months there!
After hearing that, I was dreading Thursday. If he thinks Julie is dumb, whatever could he think of me? I didn't even know where to start answering his questions, and Julie at least thought of feasible sounding answers!
So Thursday came and I was peppered with questions about locals: doses, effects, treatments and toxicities. I wasn't stumped until he got to the toxicity part, because I didn't realize right away that he was asking about toxicities. He has a very weird, round-about way of asking questions. Finally, it occurred to me that toxicities was the only thing he could possibly mean, and started rattling them off. We learned them by blood level - aka the stupid way, while he was taught them by dosage - aka the smart way.
When I was done, he stepped back and said to the surgeon that he should listen to me, he might learn something. & holy crap, this MDA boss dude has been praising me ever since (not to Julie's face, though). He seems to think I'm a genius or super student or whatever.
I feel like I don't deserve that praise. The questions weren't that hard. Julie does better than me all around. I totally slacked off in Regional and pretty much all of last semester, actually. I feel like I let down my friend MA a bit by not studying with her like I did in the Fall (although, she still got a failing C in the Fall, so I guess it wouldn't have made a difference....). I dunno. It was on a wing and a prayer that I figured out what he was getting at, just like it was a wing and a prayer that I figured out WTF Eileen was asking on her exams and passed, as opposed to MA who failed and had to leave the program
I've been too embarrassed to tell this to anyone who is connected to the program. My Mom is thrilled though. Ever since MA failed, any mention of anything related to this program and she keeps asking me if I'm doing ok and if I'm going to fail. WTF Mom, thanks. I've told her each time that my GPA is more than adequate, but you really can be out at any moment in this thing, so it's unnerving for all of us.
Ugh, this drama is more mentally stressing than the actually work itself!