Your First Nursing Job
/Remember that first nursing job? I know I do even though 1992 was many years ago.
From Nursing Student To Real Nurse
Nursing care plans that I labored over for eight hours in school were behind me. Those care plans would now be put into action as soon as a patient was admitted.
Nursing boards, studied for and passed, were in my rear-view mirror.
It was time for my first nursing job – that moment when school work and clinical rotations stand at your back (you're counting on them to hold you up) and you launch into the unknown.
Time to be a "real" nurse.
Grateful to no longer be a nursing student, I was nonetheless anxious about becoming a nurse on-the-unit with my own patient load and patient care responsibilities.
First Nursing Job
My first real nursing job was at Johns Hopkins Hospital working in Pediatrics. That being said, this was no ordinary pediatrics unit with the ubiquitous tonsillectomy. In fact, we did not provide care for tonsillectomy patients here.
In this large medical-surgical pediatric unit that included an eight-bed step-down unit, one example of surgery was bladder extrophy repairs that placed bladders back inside the body and required six weeks of recovery on the unit.
What a privilege to work at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Such an educational opportunity to work on this pediatric unit that cared for ages two to twelve.
Multi-discipline services were available to care for these small patients. We had specialists in areas such as Infectious Disease and Pain Management.
The pediatric phlebotomists were a god-send with their expertise to flawlessly start IV lines and get blood samples from tiny veins.
Working With Experts
We also had patients who came in for hemispherectomies that were performed by the famous, ground-breaking neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson.
You can read about his life in his book: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired.
The nursing staff was always a little awestruck when he arrived on the unit with his team of residents swirling around him.
As a neophyte, I remember initially thinking how barbaric it seemed to remove half the brain of a child.
But then, I saw a child lying in a bed having intractable seizures with no interactive life. This was their life, seizures, nothing more. After recovering from the surgery, children often returned to the unit to see us – walking, talking and smiling – they were living life with gusto.
That's when I realized I was no longer in Kansas. It was my first introduction to the plasticity of the young brain.
A Love For Labor And Delivery
Yet, in spite of all the joy of working at Hopkins, I couldn't stay. My heart called to me to work in Labor and Delivery, so off I headed into the world of birthing babies.
The medical-surgical experience I gained from my time at Hopkins was invaluable and prepared me for the world of Labor and Delivery (L&D). In L&D, the nursing rhythm moves from zero to 60-miles-an-hour in a moment's notice.
Working on the pediatric unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital laid a deep groundwork of experience so I could make that jump into the hyper-space speed of L&D.
What was your first nursing job?
