The Good, Bad & the Ugly

Yesterday was a great day - milestone wise - for me at work. I was assigned to an AROM induction that I handled the whole way through from admission to IV start and AROM to epidural to birth and recovery - INDEPENDENTLY!!! My preceptor didn't even have to come in the room.... I was thrilled.... Because there has usually been a point sometime during the labor that I get the "deer in the headlights" look and get lost or sidetracked as to what I need to do next... But yesterday I held it together the whole way through!!

I didn't do everything perfectly, and there is room for improvement... But I'm thrilled to be on my way to independence in labor/delivery nursing.

Speaking of imperfection.... Yesterday I did the "set-up" which involves setting up a sterile field with the doctor's instruments for delivery on it - each dr has their own specific preferences, etc. for how they want it set up. So, I was doing the sterile set up and I thought to myself, "Hmmm, this table seems different than usual." But, not being able to put my finger on what was different, I covered the table when I was done and went on. Then, when the doctor came in for delivery, he uncovered the table and said, "Are we trying to save space?" I looked at it and thought for a second about what he said then realized what was different.... I forgot to pull up the side table flap that makes the table about a foot longer when it is pulled up..... He laughed when he saw that I realized my mistake... I said, "Can you tell I'm still on orientation?" :)

That doctor is pretty easy going and easy to work with... But there is one doctor in particular that intimidates me, regretably. I try to not feel flustered when working with him or calling him...but without fail I am flustered and I inevitably do or say something stupid/absent-mindedly because of it. For example, the other day I was calling him with lab values and I read off the one value as being "0.0" as in saying "zero POINT zero." DUH! It's just zero. And then another time he was leaving the floor (by way of the back staircase) when I received a panic WBC value on my patient. So, wanting to catch him quickly, I ran over to the stair case and called his name right before the door closed. He turned around and I (having never gone down that staircase before) pushed on the door to open it... Nothing. Then I pushed again... Nothing!!! He rolled his eyes and said, "Push the green button." Sure enough, there was a big green button on the wall beside the door that said, "DOOR."

Something like not knowing how to push open a door seems silly and almost laughable...But on that particular day it sent me over the edge. We had just had a hard delivery with a baby born with an apgar of 1, then 4 and was transferred to the NICU - at the same time the baby was going bad, the mother had a postpartum hemorrhage and we lost her IV site and I was scrambling to start another so I could infuse pitocicn while giving hemabate and methergine......So, follow that kind of delivery up with an un-open-able door and you get tears. After I was done receiving orders on the patient with the panic value, I went back to the nurses station and lost my composure and cried. The un-open-able door was the straw that broke the camel's back, you could say....

So, I've had bad days and good ones... It just so happens that yesterday was a rather good one... :) So, I'll enjoy my day off today!