Just a Good Day

Like I've mentioned before, this semester has been my first clinical experience in the hospitals for nursing school. I am a nursing student working with patients and nurses on the trauma floor. Sometimes there are actually quite a few trauma patients, but there are also general surgery or general med patients, too. Some weeks I've had patients with exciting medical histories and problems, and then other weeks I just have a patient that's recovering from something or other and is pretty independent.

At MCV, there are Care Partners on the different units. One of the care partners on the trauma floor is actually a nursing student in the accelerated program at VCU, so she is just a little bit ahead of us. She is super nice and helpful, and this morning rather than being paired with a nurse and just one patient, I was paired with the care partner and we had about five patients that we were working with.

Today was just one of those good mornings. Nothing too exciting happened, just several sets of blood glucose tests and vital signs, but all the patients were just so nice and talkative and funny today. Just a good day. One of my patients was this super cute, eighty-two year old woman who was literally the funniest thing. Just had such a happy disposition despite being so dependent on other people and pretty miserable at times. Makes it so easy to want to take care of people like that.

I had another patient who was also just so cute and nice and talkative. I ended up getting her some coffee and everything, and fixed it up with some cream and sugar. I went back in her room, and her coffee was sitting there on the table half-empty, and I asked her if I did an okay job making the coffee, because I've never had it before. She was flabbergasted. She said: "Honey, if you want to be a nurse and have so many kids, you need to get some coffee in you! Where are you from, anyways?" She thought I was from foreign land where coffee didn't exist... was surprised when I told her I lived in Virginia all my life :).

And lastly, the best part of my day: So the very first week of clinical I was paired up with my friend Stephania and we had two patients to take care of. Well, one of them was super nice, and she had been there for a few weeks. We went back a week later for classes, and she was still there. I was taking care of a patient in the same room, but I checked on her and asked her if she remembered me from the week before. She said that she didn't really, but I had only seen her for such a little period of time. That second week, the lady was discharged and got to go home--she was so excited. Today, a few weeks later, she was back and I stopped in again. I said, "Hey! What are you doing back again, you were supposed to stay out of this place! Do you remember me?" She looked up and started laughing and said, "Of course! You were the one taking care of that crazy lady that I shared a room with last time." So we chatted for a few minutes, and then I was off.

It's nice having days where everyone you run into is just so nice, upbeat, and happy about life. And hey, if all these patients in the hospital have nothing to complain about, what should I be complaining about?

Main 9 Central Clinical Group!