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| "I'll take "Words That Rhyme With 'truck' for $1000, Alex..." |
Pediatric codes are the worst. Like somewhere between merely horrific, going all the way to hellish. We're talking three-pages-of-code-notes-charting hellish.
Always.
ALWAYS.
Every time I do one or see one, I pray it's the last one I'll ever do.
But it never is.
And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Just finished clinical rotations with another about-to-graduate nursing student (my second so far) who wants to work the E.D. Since they were joined at the hip with moi, the designated utility infielder of my stomping grounds, they tagged along for shifts in triage, trauma, and multiple shifts with pairs of critical ICU holds camping in the ED. Final shift bonus for training purposes: a full arrest.
We don't normally throw that at our actual licensed new grad RNs until a month or so into their ED preceptorship, but this not-yet-graduated nursing student took to all of this like a duck to water with minimal guidance and supervision. Huzzah.
My earlier one is now in their 15th month here, and about 8 months out of training wheels, and is doing great.
I'm not going to be doing this job forever, and it's satisfying to pass on some of what I know before I either start forgetting it, or become too mentally or physically decrepit to pay it forward. I'm still pretty pissed at what the Idiots In Charge did with my first new grad RN (who recycled in-hospital despite the Mean Girls in the ED to become a fantastic ICU nurse, after some horrible co-workers hamfistedly and short-sightedly crashed their quest to work the ED), but starting out some nursing students right, who will, to a 95% certainty, knock out all their certs (ACLS, PALS, NIH) before applying to HR for an opening in the ED and get fast-tracked to starting here takes some of the butthurt sting out of that earlier cardinal sin. Not all of it, but some.
I'll recommend my latest padawan to my director for hiring (I'm only one voice), but with current turnover, they'll probably be picked up after passing the NCLEX and knocking out the pre-requisite certs.
{New grad tip: Get all the crap (certs/cards/classes) your wished-for department/specialty requires before you send in a resume and apply. That moves you from Florence Nightingale Wannabee, in a stack of 1000 resumes from the same, which will sit in HR until they've exhausted all the great candidates, and move your application into the basket with the 10 other smart and motivated applicants who have all their crap together first, whom HR can and will interview and hire for next week, or the very next new grad class. Write this tip on your hand with a Sharpie, lest ye forget! Or wonder why no one has called you 3 months after you graduated, while you're still serving lattes as a barista. Your choice, kids.}
It's almost like I know what I'm doing, and the bosses' boss keeps funneling some good rookie prospects to me to impart some wee few tricks of the trade.
Sadly, their completion means I'll now be doing all my work again, instead of supervising a bright young acolyte at those tasks.
>Le sigh<. First-world problems.
Still worth it.
