Nursing Student Coach
Join Lauren Chapnick, RN, as she takes you through the journey of becoming a nurse! On Nursing Student Coach, Lauren, who is a new nursing professional, along with her knowledgeable guests will give you the tools to succeed in your nursing career. They will discuss ways to reduce anxiety and stress, share tips on studying and preparing for your NCLEX, and so much more - you won't be alone in this adventure! New episodes air every Thursday.
Nursing Student Coach
Welcome to the Wild West: My First Day as an ER Nurse
Can you imagine waking up, slipping on your scrubs, and plunging straight into the heart-pounding world of emergency nursing? Well, that's exactly what my first day in the unit was like, complete with a cardiac arrest code and post-mortem care. It's a challenging world to step into, but oh, the rewards are incredible. This episode takes you along on my journey into this fast-paced specialty, offering a glimpse into the unique experiences and responsibilities that make emergency nursing so fulfilling.
As we wrap up our first season, I'm filled with gratitude for all of you incredible listeners. Your commitment to becoming future nurses is nothing short of inspiring. Let's take a moment to celebrate our journey so far before we plunge back in for season two in January. And trust me when I say, it's going to be packed with even more insights and experiences from the world of nursing. Can't wait to reconnect with you all then!
Nursing school is a wild ride, but that doesn't mean you have to run and hide when the going gets tough. Don't leave your stress undiagnosed. You gotta call the nursing student coach. Real-life tips from a registered nurse In school and out. She's seen the worst. Now, without further ado, yeah, here is your host. It's the nursing student coach.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and welcome to Nursing Student Coach. This brings us to episode 27, and if you've listened to any of the shows so far, you may know that 27 is a favorite number of mine. It's a lucky number of mine, and so I think it is appropriate to make episode 27 the final episode of season 1 of Nursing Student Coach. We will be back in January, coming in strong with season 2. This is the end of our nursing school semester, so let's take a few weeks, let's enjoy ourselves, take a breather, and we will be back in mid-January With new episodes with season 2. So for the final episode, what I wanted to talk about Is something I haven't really talked about yet, and that is my job. I am currently doing a nursing residency program In an emergency department.
Speaker 2:I graduated nursing school in May, past my NCLEX in June and I started my emergency department residency in September and I chose emergency. I didn't know that that's what I wanted to do all along. My problem in nursing school was that I genuinely really liked everything and I could not make up my mind. I love psych. I have a passion for psych that kind of caught me by surprise. I love mother-baby. I really wanted to get the foundation of med-surge. But every time I thought of leaning in one direction, I just thought you know what, maybe I'm closing myself off to other learning opportunities. And I saw this posting come up For emergency department residency for new grads and I said that is it, that is my job, because I will have the opportunity to learn everything. And, if I'm being honest, it intimidated me a little bit also. I mean, emergency room sounds scary, and that's another reason why I did it, because I wanted to really do something. That was such a challenge. I just want to learn and I want to absorb as much as I possibly can, and so I just want to talk about what my experience has been like, share a few stories, and then I want to just talk about what season 2 will be all about. So, basically, the emergency department you will see every age and almost every diagnosis. I mean just the other day and I'm still precepting I am on an orientation for nine months, which is really, really great.
Speaker 2:If you have an opportunity to do a residency program. You are very supported by the hospital educators. You split your time between working on your unit and doing classes. Learning all about it's basically going back to nursing school again, except everything is super, super relevant to your specialty and you're getting paid, of course, which is a nice bonus. You're getting paid as an RN from day one, but a lot of the time you're in class or you're in a simulation lab, you're doing mock codes, you're doing, you know, simulation similar to what you would do in nursing school, except it is extremely specific to your specific specialty. So that's one of the things that I really love about emergency is that I'll have one patient in one room who's 95 years old and a two month old baby in the next room, and so you really just have to know everything. So that's why I'm on orientation for so long, because there's a lot to learn. You know, I have friends that are working on other units in different hospitals and they were off orientation working on their own with six patients on by themselves in eight weeks. So I very, very happy that I feel so supported that I'm doing this nice long residency program. You know, I think there's something to be said about being thrown right into it and you will learn that way as well, but I definitely feel safer in this environment.
Speaker 2:I just wanna talk about my first day on the unit. So respecting HIPAA privacy, of course when I first stepped on the unit and I was just shadowing, just observing this first day, and I literally walked into cardiac arrest code and unfortunately this patient did not survive. It was a drug overdose and despite their best efforts this man did not survive. So that was literally my introduction to the emergency department was literally just walking into a code where this patient died and then several hours later I was part of the team that did the post-mortem care. So that was very humbling as well. You know, extubating a patient who has passed on I had never experienced that before removing everything and just seeing technically all the things that they have to do, was extremely humbling and I considered it a privilege to be there in those moments. And it's the kind of thing where it doesn't hit you until later what you're actually doing. This man had a family. He lived a whole life. We knew really nothing about him, but we had the privilege and the honor to be with him in those final moments. So that was one introduction that I will never forget.
Speaker 2:And it kind of hits you on your way home sometimes the things that you experience because when you're working in the ED you're just go, go, go, go, go, go go. You're so busy. That's one of the things that I really love about it. Another thing that I really love about it is that it's so busy. It's just it's very, very fast-paced. You right now I'm working the day shift as I'm orienting. I'll eventually go to nights, but you will blink and six hours have gone by and you haven't eaten and you don't even feel hungry because you're just go, go, go. I really love the pace. That's definitely my speed.
Speaker 2:And this is a pro and a con, I'd say about emergency is that you are only spending a few hours with these patients. So I personally love talking to my patients, getting to know them, and one of the things that I feel is a big honor of working in this department is that I get to be one of the first points of contact when they come in in a crisis. So you don't come to the emergency room because you want to. You're not just strolling in for fun. You're there because you're having a crisis, you're having an emergency. It's in the name. So to be that first point of care and to be that comfort for that patient is a big privilege that I don't take lightly and something that I really love about my job. But at the same time they're only there for a few hours, so they're either discharged home or they're transferred to a different hospital If it's something that we they need a higher level of acuity or they're admitted they're admitted to one of the floors.
Speaker 2:So you really you often don't get the full story, you don't get the, you don't get to hear how it turned out. So that I do think about even though I've only been here a few months, I already have made connections and seen so many things that I think about these people sometimes and I wonder if they're OK. I wonder what happened, especially those patients who got transferred out. You just wonder what happened and you don't get the end of the story when, when you're in this unit. So that's something to consider. You also really don't get to see the progress of the patient. It's just in and out super quick and a lot of people really love that because, let's say, you have a patient who is more challenging we'll say personality wise, they're gone in a few hours. But it's hard to you know, you form a relationship with each patient but it's short lived, so that that can be a challenge.
Speaker 2:So I want to wrap with a few more stories, a few more quick stories. Then I just want to talk quickly about what season two will be all about, because I'm really excited about that. So you know, the day one started with this cardiac arrest patient who didn't survive and I was part of postmortem care, which is when the patient dies is preparing the body. And then, to close out, that day we had this is just kind of a crazy funny story we had a patient who had dementia and he was moved to the hallway because he just kept getting out of bed and he was a fall risk and it was a challenge to constantly keep an eye on him. So we ended up he was moved into the hallway and it was a whole team of us that would just keep reminding him to stay in bed and he was taking off his clothes. I mean, this poor man just didn't know where he was, he was completely disoriented to you know person, place, time, all the things, and eventually he was just naked and as much as we tried to get him to cover him, he was just constantly taking off the blanket, taking off the gown. So eventually he was just kind of naked and we just let it be, because he just kept taking everything off and he didn't know where he was and was getting very agitated. And he stood up and before we knew it, this man was literally pooping all over the floor and one person was holding him up and the other person was trying to catch the poop like in wipes.
Speaker 2:At the same time we had another patient who was brought in by the police, totally drunk, belligerent, and he had come out of his room literally at the same time and started peeing all over the vital side machines. So we have one elderly dementia patient taking a poop on the floor with all of us surrounding him so he doesn't slip in it, and this other patient peeing everywhere. So you're trying not to get peed on, you're trying not to get pooped on. And this is literally my introduction to the emergency department. We are all just trying to keep a straight face because it was funny. I mean it was a crazy situation, but it was also kind of funny. I mean how can you not laugh at this? Like the charge nurse is sitting there, like trying to put a diaper on this patient who was pooping all over the floor. Everybody else was trying to get this drunk guy back into his room who was peeing everywhere and oh man, it was just such a wild introduction and somebody actually called the ED the Wild West and they said welcome to the Wild West and the other residents that are in the program with me and I we all just kind of walked out that day just a little bewildered but ready for it. You know we said this is nuts, but we're here for it, we're here to learn and we're just so excited. So that was sort of my intro to the ED.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of days that are crazy like that and there's a lot of days that are just busy. There's a lot of days that are scary when your patients are. They come in either they're having an MI or they're having a stroke or something like that and you have to really prioritize. Who do I see first? You know, of course you're going to see the more critical patients first and you can get behind very quickly and it's a lot of critical thinking and prioritizing and it's a lot of just remembering what certain conditions are and what labs you're going to be running and it is just. It is such an intensive learning experience and it is so exciting and I'm so grateful for this opportunity and I thought it would be quite appropriate for season two to share a patient with you each week, respecting their privacy, of course.
Speaker 2:I would like to, each week of season two, tell you about a patient and I will give you a diagnosis. We will break it down what is the patho behind this diagnosis, what are the labs we're going to run and what happened maybe in this particular case. And then I will give you at least one NCLEX style practice question with each diagnosis. So that is what I would like to do with season two. We will be back to kick off the first episode in January and that is going to be on end stage liver failure and ascites. So I hope that you will tune in then.
Speaker 2:I thank you all so much for all of the warm, positive vibes for season one. I am just so, so proud of all of you, all of you future nurses out there. You're going to kill it, you're going to slay it, and I am so glad to be here with you every week on this podcast. Thank you for your ratings and your reviews. We are now at the end of our 27th episode and I thank you so much for your support. I love you all and I will see you in January for season two. Bye, bye.
