Tales of a Big City Hospital Nurse.....

I think I am going to change my blog title to the one above.

I work for a very, very large hospital in a very large city. I work in a pediatric transplant unit. I am a night-shifter. This environment is very different from the one that I spent my first months as a baby-nurse. The nurse dynamic is different. The relationship between management and staff nurses is something that has to be seen to be believed. (Maybe it is the union effect....)

I spent the first 10 months with 4-6 patients of varying degrees of acuity. Many nights there was no lunch break, much less time to pee. However, we had great teamwork, and camaraderie.

The current situtation is a 180. 3 patients per nurse, 1.5 hours of break per night, and I tend to be bored to tears. But that is orientation, I suppose. No real autonomy, yet. And scheduled medications (3 scheduled time periods per night - what a genius idea!) make for long stretches of nothing to do. I am chomping at the bit to get going already, but I need to stop or I will wind up with a shortened orientation period, and that worked out to 5 weeks of orientation for a brand new grad at my old hospital.

Anyway, I am going to treat this like a new blog. Starting over from scratch, so to speak. Next post, I will reintroduce myself.

Welcome to the tales of a Big City Hospital Nurse.