Holy smokes! This has turned into a busy week! After a boring Monday evening of The Bachelorette (yay for Shawn!), I was back at the new hospital for orientation again on Tuesday from 8am-3:30pm. It was boring and I find it really shocking the number of questions people ask during a general orientation. I mean, we have an entire orientation process on our new units too, so let’s save all those questions for later on! Also, one of the techs wanted to know all about the IV team accessing ports in the ER and whether or not she could actually draw blood but not start IVs (ER accesses all their own ports, and techs don’t have a single thing to do with it, so not even something to be concerned with). Needless to say, it was a painfully long day. I met up briefly with my clinical specialist who wanted me to come shadow today, so I agreed to a half day.
Despite not getting any sleep on Monday night (maybe 2.5hrs), I had energy last night! I was incredibly nauseous, but I can power through that if I have some energy! So I went to BodyPump last night! I don’t do Les Mills classes regularly and am confused about whether or not all the classes are exactly the same for the whole quarter. I know they just released BodyPump 94, so will it be exactly the same if I go back before the next release? Regardless, since that gym took away CrossFit from ClassPass and I was in the mood for some weights, it sufficed. I still got a decent workout but wish that it was heavier weights for less reps, but I guess that’s what my own gym time is good for! Sadly, I didn’t sweat at all, and I always feel like a workout isn’t the same if I don’t sweat. Even though my body was tired afterwards, the workouts just aren’t quite on that level for me.
I had a fantastic night of sleep last night, only to wake up for my first day of shadowing at the new job! I was with a floor nurse of 20 years today and I did enjoy the time there. Definitely a totally different pace than the ER which I am totally welcoming right now! There was seriously no stress while I was there! I’m sure there are days that are much crazier than that, but the pace was just so different than what I’m used to! The nurse I was shadowing did ask me what ER nurses do. I didn’t really understand her question, so she goes, “Like what do they do? With patients? What do you do with them?” It really goes to show how little our job is understood by some other nurses outside of the department. I mean, these patients obviously come to the floor with a ton of stuff initiated so to me, it would be completely obvious what we do, but I guess not. I also thought I was going to need to brush up on some knowledge since I know a little about a lot but not a lot about many things, and the nurse kind of freaked out about an elevated troponin on a renal patient. That’s really common in dialysis patients and she had no idea. It definitely opened my eyes to the fact that I definitely do know things others don’t, even if my only experience is ER. So that’s always nice!
I didn’t get out of the hospital until 3:45, which was way later than I had hoped. I decided to head home instead of running errands since Jon and I are planning on having a bit of a date night! I have to go back to work in the ER from 11am-7pm tomorrow (I had to swap a shift to get off next week for more orientation). I’m not looking forward to working tomorrow at all, but I have a four day weekend in sight!
Time to go get dinner with Jon!