Slow Spinning Redemption.
It's taken a good 24 hours for the idea of not being on clinical placement to sink in. Sleep, ice cream and super-hero movies on the box have helped.
It's hardly as if I've been living and breathing nothing but nursing for the past three weeks, but the experience has been intense. I've been reviving parts of my brain and skills in my hands that feel like they've been asleep for years (and unlike the other three, I've got a certain sympathy for Frodo's take on returning to the Shire in this instance). I've been tired, smelly, had aching feet, and unable to completely get rid of images of demented old buggers sitting in viscous lakes of shit from my forebrain. I've punctured skin with sharp bits of steel, gently held down the delirious, discussed the virtues of playing Scrabble on Facebook with a little old lady old enough to be my grandma (she was the one asking if we had a laptop she could use to check her games), pulled on and off more gowns, gloves and masks than I care to remember, laughed at stories of an 18 year old patient scandalising the ward staff when she was sprung in compromising positions with her visiting boyfriend (seriously, what did anyone expect? it's why I always knocked first), and watched a father pleading to make it to his daughter's wedding die slowly from the consequences of alcohol withdrawal.
I imagine in time that it's the social interactions that will stay with me, but for the moment it's the technical skills that are giving me the most pleasure. Partially because I always knew I was good with patients, partially because I'm a student again (and therefore automatically more task-orientated than seeing the big picture), and partially because I haven't had the chance to some of those things for years and I feel like I'm brushing the rust off. It's the little things like reconstituting dried, powdered drugs, and putting a cannula in a vein first time that I haven't done since... I don't know... 2005ish maybe. The skills I knew I had lost, and the things I knew made me a klutz and someone who could talk the talk but tripped over all the time during the walking bit. Those things that lurked in the back of my brain and made me doubt everything else all over again. I have some of them back again now, and I see a way to get others back in due course. And get better than I ever had the chance to be before.
That's an exultant kind of feeling. I'm reluctant to let it go, after all the years of doubt and deskilling.
And the other stuff is there anyway, and has never left in quite the same ways. I know I have the people skills. I know I have the attitudes. I have the language. I can connect the dots when it comes to pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatments as well as anyone else. But it's the confidence to do what I regard as the 'little' things, like get vascular access or move through the multiple layers of checks for drug administration like clockwork every time, that I've needed and haven't had for a long time.
Some of the feedback I've received while on placement is that I am not only a notably reflective practitioner, but that I can be too hard on myself. Well, duh! ;( It's always been a risk with me, when I spend so much time looking inward and thinking and second guessing what I see; but in this case I do hold myself to a higher standard than the average 2nd year nursing student. I have done this before, and should be doing it well automatically. Not entirely realistic on my part perhaps, but it's there all the same. And while I haven't demonstrated the mastery of skills I once had to my complete satisfaction, I haven't done all badly either.
I am satisfied. I am grateful. I am feeling...
It's hardly as if I've been living and breathing nothing but nursing for the past three weeks, but the experience has been intense. I've been reviving parts of my brain and skills in my hands that feel like they've been asleep for years (and unlike the other three, I've got a certain sympathy for Frodo's take on returning to the Shire in this instance). I've been tired, smelly, had aching feet, and unable to completely get rid of images of demented old buggers sitting in viscous lakes of shit from my forebrain. I've punctured skin with sharp bits of steel, gently held down the delirious, discussed the virtues of playing Scrabble on Facebook with a little old lady old enough to be my grandma (she was the one asking if we had a laptop she could use to check her games), pulled on and off more gowns, gloves and masks than I care to remember, laughed at stories of an 18 year old patient scandalising the ward staff when she was sprung in compromising positions with her visiting boyfriend (seriously, what did anyone expect? it's why I always knocked first), and watched a father pleading to make it to his daughter's wedding die slowly from the consequences of alcohol withdrawal.
I imagine in time that it's the social interactions that will stay with me, but for the moment it's the technical skills that are giving me the most pleasure. Partially because I always knew I was good with patients, partially because I'm a student again (and therefore automatically more task-orientated than seeing the big picture), and partially because I haven't had the chance to some of those things for years and I feel like I'm brushing the rust off. It's the little things like reconstituting dried, powdered drugs, and putting a cannula in a vein first time that I haven't done since... I don't know... 2005ish maybe. The skills I knew I had lost, and the things I knew made me a klutz and someone who could talk the talk but tripped over all the time during the walking bit. Those things that lurked in the back of my brain and made me doubt everything else all over again. I have some of them back again now, and I see a way to get others back in due course. And get better than I ever had the chance to be before.
That's an exultant kind of feeling. I'm reluctant to let it go, after all the years of doubt and deskilling.
And the other stuff is there anyway, and has never left in quite the same ways. I know I have the people skills. I know I have the attitudes. I have the language. I can connect the dots when it comes to pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatments as well as anyone else. But it's the confidence to do what I regard as the 'little' things, like get vascular access or move through the multiple layers of checks for drug administration like clockwork every time, that I've needed and haven't had for a long time.
Some of the feedback I've received while on placement is that I am not only a notably reflective practitioner, but that I can be too hard on myself. Well, duh! ;( It's always been a risk with me, when I spend so much time looking inward and thinking and second guessing what I see; but in this case I do hold myself to a higher standard than the average 2nd year nursing student. I have done this before, and should be doing it well automatically. Not entirely realistic on my part perhaps, but it's there all the same. And while I haven't demonstrated the mastery of skills I once had to my complete satisfaction, I haven't done all badly either.
I am satisfied. I am grateful. I am feeling...
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