This holding pattern gave me the chance to take my first real deep breath in four years and reflect on what I really learned during nursing school before jumping back into the pool again as an RN.
Here are the moments that stood out the most.
Poker Face: During my very first clinical, sophomore year in a local nursing home, my clinical instructor reprimanded me for not having a proper "poker face" that nurses are apparently required to have. I guess I got the hang of it because years later, when I took an acting class my acting instructor told me that I had too much of a poker face and needed to learn to show emotion.
STDs, Birth Control and Me: Part of my senior year community health clinical had me assigned to an urban halfway house. For reasons that I still can't remember, for my senior year project I chose to give a presentation to the shelter women about sexually transmitted diseases and birth control.At that point in my life, I will admit that I didn't have any first hand experience to report which made it all the more bizarre of a project decision. I'm pretty sure my face was a red hot radish throughout the entire lecture and I'm really not sure how much these women could possibly have learned from me. Although it was excellent practice for the myriad of often intimate patient teaching experiences I would later face as an RN.
Ayuda Mi Dios: Watching the birth of a baby was the greatest moment of my nursing school experience. And watching the medical student catch the baby and hand it to me, was the most terrifying. The students in my class unofficially competed with one another about who got to see a birth first and then who got to see the most births. This was my only one and I was the last student in the class to witness a child birth.The semester had almost ended and I was losing hope that it would happen. In fact, during the previous clinical day I had stayed several hours past "quitting time" in hopes that my patient would deliver (she did – about a half hour after I left). The delivery I did see was fast. So fast that I wasn't the only one surprised.The poor mom progressed so fast that medication was no longer an option and she had to deliver naturally. It was a loud, messy miracle, but a miracle nevertheless. There's a part of me that will always associate the words "ayuda me dios" with childbirth – "Help me God."
Nobody ever said miracles were painless, kind of like getting a nursing degree. Remember to pay attention to the little moments in your nursing school journey. Don't wait until it's in the rear view mirror before you start paying attention. You might miss something.
Most Educational Nursing School Moments
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