Went back to work last night after being off for a week. I thought I would still be in "training" mode for at least last night but it didn't work out that way and I pulled a full load. What's one more day, right?
After I got cares done and my charting caught up, I flipped over to my email to see what new "nastygrams" as other people call them were in my mailbox letting me know what I'd screwed up. None. That was cool. Actually, for all the "nastygram" talk, I've rarely felt overwhelmed from supervisors with negativity. As with everywhere you work, especially when you have a fairly big dept you're always going to have a person or two who love to find other people's mistakes and point them out.
But I digress. As usual.
No nasty's. And then I saw my friend Sherry's name. It was an email she sent to me the day before she died talking about how much fun her December birthday party would be if I got to go out to California to help her celebrate.
Nothing like being gut-punched, eh?
Not too long after that we got a critical baby admission. I'm the newbie. I still have admissions to sign off so it was mine. But as I was standing there doing it, I had to be coached because it suddenly occurred to me that I'd never even seen a critical baby admission. Sure, in some ways it's like an adult but in a lot of ways it's not either. It's just that it hit me that I've seen parts of a baby already in the unit being intubated and I've seen and admitted a couple of babies who needed nothing more than sat monitors but this was the big enchilada.
It was fine. I got through it. Both the experienced therapists who were there last night nicely whispered in my ear, coaching me. But afterwards they had a very good point. We've got at least one set of triplets in the back. What if it had been the triplets? I would have had no safety net. I would have been on my own.
Scary thought.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, they quickly figured out that although I've been supposedly training in the unit for two months, the reality is that I only had 2, maybe 3 days in June I was actually in the unit, I also lost 4th of July weekend to having to be pulled upstairs into the adult wards, and a couple of the days I had in the middle there, my preceptor was the only person working those nights who was qualified to run the pediatric vents we had so we'd be in Peds and go down to the NICU when we could. On top of that, our census for critical care neos has been low during this time. Extremely low, as in no vents coinciding with my schedule. Sort of puts a damper on training.
Nobody's fault, just one of those weird combination of circumstances. They figured out that I'd really only had about 9 days in the unit to train and none of those had had really any admits or vents to work with. They were so nice about it and very supportive, saying that they would work it out to give me additional training days.
That's great. I'm certainly not insulted by the idea of more training. I know it's just been that combo of staffing and census and whatnot but I HATE feeling like a problem. Now I'm a burden that at least five people are going to have to deal with and I HATE that. Not to mention, I'm now holding up the next therapist from training. Hey, I love attention, but not this kind. It may not seem like a big deal but it's a big deal to me. Between that and Sher's email I could hardly talk to anyone last night. It took huge efforts on my part to even attempt to sort of normal and that was with going to the bathroom a couple of times to cry. I don't even know why I'm admitting that. What a baby, pun intended, I am. But I really do hate feeling like I'm a problem that they have to figure out how to solve. Shudder.
Anyway, yes I know in my head this isn't a bad thing or a criticism of my personally for them to have to lengthen my training, it's just the way things turned out, but I still hate it and feel guilty. My favorite emotion. The one I always go happily running for with stretched out arms. I didn't sleep well today. I relived last night over and over and over again and kept waking myself up thinking things like "If I'd just asked more questions or taken more notes or something, then everything would have been perfect and I wouldn't have to have more training."
The really funny, not, part is this is exactly the kind of thing I would have talked about with my friend, Sher, and she would have made me feel better immediately. I'm smiling thinking about how she would answer an email like what I've just written. She would have written a long paragraph sympathizing with the bad situation and then she would have told me to get over myself which would have made me laugh out loud and then...get over myself.:-)
And the truth is even though I'm sitting here whining and complaining, I know that my little self-drama of emotion has nothing to do with anything. It's not important. What is important is learning everything as fast as I can, putting my head down, and getting the job done. I'll whine on here but tonight I'll barrel through the job, doing the very best I can. That's what matters.
On a lighter note, the vent kid I admitted was fine by the morning gas and the doc said "Oh. I forgot. I was going to have you extubate that kid a couple of hours ago so let's go ahead and do it now." It was 0630. See, sort of went along with a bad night for me. BUT the funny part was when we got back to the tech room to give report the therapist who took my load, Mary, looked at me straight-faced, and I was too depressed to be my normal joking self when she said "You did break down and clean that vent, right?" I didn't even get it. I just hung my head and said, "No, but I will..." She punched me and said "I'm just kidding! Go home! I'll take care of it."
Went back to work last night after being off for a week. I thought I would still be in "training" mode for at least last night but it didn't work out that way and I pulled a full load. What's one more day, right?
After I got cares done and my charting caught up, I flipped over to my email to see what new "nastygrams" as other people call them were in my mailbox letting me know what I'd screwed up. None. That was cool. Actually, for all the "nastygram" talk, I've rarely felt overwhelmed from supervisors with negativity. As with everywhere you work, especially when you have a fairly big dept you're always going to have a person or two who love to find other people's mistakes and point them out.
But I digress. As usual.
No nasty's. And then I saw my friend Sherry's name. It was an email she sent to me the day before she died talking about how much fun her December birthday party would be if I got to go out to California to help her celebrate.
Nothing like being gut-punched, eh?
Not too long after that we got a critical baby admission. I'm the newbie. I still have admissions to sign off so it was mine. But as I was standing there doing it, I had to be coached because it suddenly occurred to me that I'd never even seen a critical baby admission. Sure, in some ways it's like an adult but in a lot of ways it's not either. It's just that it hit me that I've seen parts of a baby already in the unit being intubated and I've seen and admitted a couple of babies who needed nothing more than sat monitors but this was the big enchilada.
It was fine. I got through it. Both the experienced therapists who were there last night nicely whispered in my ear, coaching me. But afterwards they had a very good point. We've got at least one set of triplets in the back. What if it had been the triplets? I would have had no safety net. I would have been on my own.
Scary thought.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, they quickly figured out that although I've been supposedly training in the unit for two months, the reality is that I only had 2, maybe 3 days in June I was actually in the unit, I also lost 4th of July weekend to having to be pulled upstairs into the adult wards, and a couple of the days I had in the middle there, my preceptor was the only person working those nights who was qualified to run the pediatric vents we had so we'd be in Peds and go down to the NICU when we could. On top of that, our census for critical care neos has been low during this time. Extremely low, as in no vents coinciding with my schedule. Sort of puts a damper on training.
Nobody's fault, just one of those weird combination of circumstances. They figured out that I'd really only had about 9 days in the unit to train and none of those had had really any admits or vents to work with. They were so nice about it and very supportive, saying that they would work it out to give me additional training days.
That's great. I'm certainly not insulted by the idea of more training. I know it's just been that combo of staffing and census and whatnot but I HATE feeling like a problem. Now I'm a burden that at least five people are going to have to deal with and I HATE that. Not to mention, I'm now holding up the next therapist from training. Hey, I love attention, but not this kind. It may not seem like a big deal but it's a big deal to me. Between that and Sher's email I could hardly talk to anyone last night. It took huge efforts on my part to even attempt to sort of normal and that was with going to the bathroom a couple of times to cry. I don't even know why I'm admitting that. What a baby, pun intended, I am. But I really do hate feeling like I'm a problem that they have to figure out how to solve. Shudder.
Anyway, yes I know in my head this isn't a bad thing or a criticism of my personally for them to have to lengthen my training, it's just the way things turned out, but I still hate it and feel guilty. My favorite emotion. The one I always go happily running for with stretched out arms. I didn't sleep well today. I relived last night over and over and over again and kept waking myself up thinking things like "If I'd just asked more questions or taken more notes or something, then everything would have been perfect and I wouldn't have to have more training."
The really funny, not, part is this is exactly the kind of thing I would have talked about with my friend, Sher, and she would have made me feel better immediately. I'm smiling thinking about how she would answer an email like what I've just written. She would have written a long paragraph sympathizing with the bad situation and then she would have told me to get over myself which would have made me laugh out loud and then...get over myself.:-)
And the truth is even though I'm sitting here whining and complaining, I know that my little self-drama of emotion has nothing to do with anything. It's not important. What is important is learning everything as fast as I can, putting my head down, and getting the job done. I'll whine on here but tonight I'll barrel through the job, doing the very best I can. That's what matters.
On a lighter note, the vent kid I admitted was fine by the morning gas and the doc said "Oh. I forgot. I was going to have you extubate that kid a couple of hours ago so let's go ahead and do it now." It was 0630. See, sort of went along with a bad night for me. BUT the funny part was when we got back to the tech room to give report the therapist who took my load, Mary, looked at me straight-faced, and I was too depressed to be my normal joking self when she said "You did break down and clean that vent, right?" I didn't even get it. I just hung my head and said, "No, but I will..." She punched me and said "I'm just kidding! Go home! I'll take care of it."