15 hours later....

So i did it! I finished my first shift as a real nurse. It was great. I am working with a preceptor, who is pretty much another nurse who shows me the ropes and answers any questions i may have. anyways, she thought it would be important that i take our entire patient load, which is four patients, since i only have eight shifts before i am on my own. it went well, i had four stable patients who were supposed to be going home the next day. one thing i will have to get used to besides trying to stay awake in the middle of the night, is the fact that i have to wake my patients up every four hours to check their blood pressure, pulse, respirations, all that good stuff. sometimes i feel like the meanest person ever. oh well. so i made it through the first 12 hours.

then i was sitting in the change of shift meeting and the charge nurse asked anyone if they were willing to stay over because two people called in sick and another nurse was running two hours late. no one could, so i said i would if they would let me, since technically i cannot work on my own. well low and behold the day charge nurse was like alright, so i ended up staying over for three more hours making some overtime in my first shift. the morning time was definitely crazy. i was assigned three patients, and then was switched over to four different patients for some reason. let me tell you that last three hours was the most chaotic experience i have had, but luckily i made it through. i was pretty exhausted when i got home and slept real hard.

overall, it was great as my first day as a real nurse. it is definitely surreal, i still feel like a student. but i guess eventually i will get past that.