My second until was a better experience than I expected. I moved to a general medical surgical unit. This unit is the only one in the hospital that does eight hour shifts. The nurses all voted for eight hour shifts and I completed the 3pm-11:30pm shift for the month of September. At first, I wasn't too happy because I don't do well past 8pm-my night time reflexes kick in and all I can think about is sleeping. Also, eight hour shifts means you have to work more days per week and I was loving the 12 hour three day shifts I did on the oncology floor. However, I tried to be positive since this program is such a blessing and I was really lucky and had amazing preceptors.
The unit is on 4 South and all the nurses are veterans. I don't think a single nurse has less than twenty years experience on the unit. That means that they are all asked to be charge nurse or resource nurse and because they know how crucial teamwork is to the job they are always helping each other. I have never seen a unit as cohesive as this one. Literally, every single nurse will pitch in and help out if one nurse is struggling or if someone is getting a late admission. It blew my mind to see so many helpful nurses. The other observation I made is that no one-not a single nurse does any work until 3:00pm on the dot. That means you don't start researching your patients until you clock in. Can you imagine? This isn't possible on other floors where you have to hit the ground running about one hour before your shift begins. Yet on 4 South the 3pm-11:30pm staff gather in the break room at about 2:50pm and greet each other, make coffee and add money to the lottery pool (I was lucky enough to be asked to join).
Since the nurses are always rotating who is charge nurse I had multiple preceptors. My main preceptor, *Jane has worked as a nurse for over 45 years. She is steady, calm, thorough and gives off this sense of peace that always helped me overcome any fears. If I made a mistake she didn't make me feel like a complete idiot. She would point it out gently and inform me of the rationale behind why something would be wrong. She introduced me to everyone on the unit and told the other nurses to treat me like family. I knew I was "in like Flynn" when I was asked to join everyone in the conference room for a "break."
The other thing I learned about the 4 South nurses is that they LOVE to eat!! There was a potluck every single shift. I felt bad because I often forgot to bring a dish to share. However, that was never a problem. I was told numerous times that I had to partake in the eating regardless of whether or not I'd brought something to share. During these "breaks" there would be discussion about patients who had been on the floor awhile. They'd talk about wounds and the best way to treat them. They'd let me know about patients that needed IV starts or NG tube insertion. I was offered first dibs on any procedures so that I could learn how to do these tasks. Most of these nurses enjoy a good joke and they'd play simple pranks on each other. I love that about them. I found myself making them laugh on a few occasions. I learned that the one thing that could make a nurse mad on this unit is if you don't provide an accurate account of the patient during report. They would say "I can't believe they didn't tell me this patient has a JP drain during report!" It was because of this that bedside report was being implemented during my last week on the unit. I had experience with this type of report from my externship so I found myself offering suggestions and feedback to my preceptors on the best way to do this task. It felt good to teach them something and give back since they had already taught me so much.
After I left 4 South I had to call and give report on a patient and it turned out the patient would be my former preceptors. Before I made the call I made sure to have as much information as possible. When I was done giving report I asked "So, how'd I do?" *Jane said to me, "Very nice job Andy. You gave me an excellent report." I'd made her proud.
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