"If you love what you're doing you never feel like you're working at all"
I would like to share to you the thing that keeps me busy aside from steeming. I am a full time nurse, I've been working in my field for roughly 3 years. I have been to different areas and spent time training and learning in every dynamic of nursing. Right now I am assigned in PACU. Our primary job is to monitor patients that underwent operation and that were also given anesthesia. We have to make sure that our patients are stable and that their previous functional capability is restored. Some of our patients are highly sedated thus we make sure that they will be fully awake and some are temporarily paralyzed so we have to wait for the sensation and motor to come back. Once the anesthesia dissipates from their body and their vital signs are stable then he is good to go.
This is the PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit) otherwise known as recovery room.
The unit has 10 bed capacity so we can cater and handle 10 patients at a time. Each bed is separated by a curtain.
Our nurse's station is located at the center of the unit so we can overlook the patients even if we are not in the bedside. There is also a central monitor that allows us to see their vital signs without looking at their own respective monitors.
Each bed has cardiac monitors. It is vital to put monitoring devices to post-op patients because there is a chance that their status will deteriorate. We had events where the patient didn't wake up because of toxicity. It is easier to detect any changes in status with the monitors in front.
One of our tasks is to send them back to their room once the criteria for discharge has been met. We also hand over our patients to their nurse-in-charge in the unit making sure that all special endorsements and considerations will be endorsed properly.
A nurse is a highly versatile and flexible job, everyday we are faced with various stressors and stimuli. We have to develop resiliency and the capacity to maintain grace under pressure. As a front liner of our patients we are subjected to different tasks that correlates with the medical team in line with our patient's condition. We serve as the patient's nurse, lawyer, counselor, or even to the extent of being their servants. We deal with patients that are infectious and contagious and demanding, we facilitate their lab exams and compliance to medications, we carry the doctor's order and assist them in any procedure. We sometimes wish we can divide our body into half to cater their needs and demands. There are instances where we go extra mile just to serve them. We do things that are not stipulated in our job description only because we value patient's needs first more than anything else.
Sadly in my country nurses are underpaid, underappreciated and undercompensated. We work our ass of more than 8 hours per day and yet we are not payed for our overtime work that is why most nursing graduates opt to work into a job that is not in line with their profession or most of us seek for greener pasture and brighter future in another country.
Nevertheless I still am proud to be a nurse, and to all nurses out there continue touching the lives of other people and serving as an instrument of God. I am so proud of you. 😊😉