Not so bad

I am tentatively reporting that so far, I think I really like my new job. Of course, it's very early days so far...but it really seems to fit. Beyond the goodies like computer charting, I'm just so tickled and happy to be back at a teaching hospital, I love seeing the gaggles of white-coated students and interns following their attending on rounds, looking like sleep-deprived fearful ducklings and mumbling incoherently as they step on the back of each other's shiny new Danskos when the attending stops the parade unexpectedly. I love listening in on rounds if I'm available, I love the new equipment and latest technology and the use of PEEP trials and arterial lines and how everyone actually knows what a hemoglobin A1C is, and why we should draw them. I love the air beds and water beds and sand beds. And so far, most of the nurses seem really nice, and welcoming, and helpful. The other day I volunteered to help an intern insert a foley catheter, only to discover that it was her very first one EVER, and so I actually taught her how to do it.

Maybe it's because my first job as a nursing tech was at a teaching hospital, and then my first two years as an RN were at teaching hospitals, but something about this job feels a bit like coming home. Slipping back into my comfort zone, with familiar insulin drip algorithms and other such protocols, it's nice.

Anyway, it's all good. It's very important for a lazy, homebody person like me to have a job that I actually enjoy, a place I want to go to, and I've got that again. Phew :)

They found me...

Today I started my new job. I now have an ID badge which states "U. S. Government" and all ten of my fat little fingerprints are squirreled away in the FBI and CIA databases. Grrrreat. Talk about an walking experiment in cognitive dissonance...that's me. Take the little left-wing socialist Arabic-speaking child of marxist hippies who throws up into her mouth a little at the mere sight of George Dubya slap a government badge on her.

Anyway, other than that, I'm sure the new job will fine....the usual use of my overpriced education and professional skills...life-saving, split-second decisions and critical thinking: "Is this stool liquid to justify the insertion of a rectal tube? Here comes the finger puppet!"

In space-time-continuum news, I've re-entered the 21st century, as evidenced by the fact that this hospital exclusively uses COMPUTER CHARTING for everything. It's so freakin' snazzy I might need to buy some new scrubs just to keep up.

Ack. I think I'm overtired.

Like a shark...

I am moving on, my contract at Private Suburban Community Hospital has ended, and instead of renewing I've decided to work closer to home. So tomorrow I'll be starting at Public Urban Hospital, or PUH. I ended up liking my time at PSCH, the other staff were so nice and warm and welcoming, the equipment was generally new and up-to-date, and the pace was fairly easy-going and straight-forward. But I refuse to drive over an hour each way to work in the fall, in the dark, in the rain....blah blah blah commutecakes. I was so happily and genuinely surprised that when I showed up for my last shift at PSCH, the other nurses had planned surprise potluck for me, gave me a card, some funny party gifts, and another nurse even came in on her day off to bring a cake with palm trees on it! It really was touching. Not touching enough to make me stay, because I am like sharknurse...move or die...heh. So, I keep moving on...

Bad things happen

Yesterday, a tragic event happened in Minneapolis, which happens to be sort of where I grew up, so it's especially sad and spine-tingly to watch the scenes of the collapse. The bridge collapse during rush hour must have been terrifying and the families of the the dead, injured, and the missing have my whole-hearted sympathies.

Yesterday, more tragic events happened in another part of the world. I'm not comparing numbers, or saying that the more people who are killed makes one tragedy more significant than another. And I'll readily admit that the closer something is to your home, the more personal ties you have to it, the more significant an event becomes to you. But I wonder how the four major cable news networks that are devoting hours and hours of coverage to this event fail to see the irony of their complete lack of mention of other tragic events happening in the world. Obviously we care more because this happened in the US, and probably because it was a seemingly random and senseless event.

But seriously people..."we" spend billions of dollars invading a foreign country, illegally occupying it for years, destroy its infrastructure, so what entitles us to the luxury of looking the other way as hundreds and thousands die over there day, week, and month?

Anyway. Thank god it's shark week on the Discovery Channel, so I have something else to watch on TV rather than being incensed and depressed by the TV news. But why do they stop at shark week? Why don't we get camel week, or tiger week? Or pony week? I love ponies too.