Friday, December 15, 2006

 

Do you know a good butt doctor?


Yes, that title is exactly how the conversation started! I had stopped at a convience store on my way to the hospital Wednesday afternoon, and when I went to the checkout counter to pay, that was the first question the clerk asked me. She then went on to talk about how her current doctor was not treating her Crohn's disease and she wanted a second opinion. I explained to her that I worked in the ER, and all the doctors I worked with were exclusively ER doctors. I did tell her she could contact our referral line, and they could set her up with an appropriate doctor. I am still trying to get used to the fact that people see you in scrubs and they will tell you anything......

Last night, I was reading an article in the latest issue of Men in Nursing about where are all the men in nursing. Hmmm, with images like the one above used to represent nursing, we wonder why more men do not want to be nurses. Not too many of the men (and actually, many of the women too) I know particularly want to be considered a "Greatest Mother". I realize that this particular image is pretty old, but I can see something like this still being used today. While I'm not exactly sure how to change it, but this type of image are not helping recruit men (or women) into nursing. Okay, stepping off of the soapbox now........

Monday, December 11, 2006

 

Mids? Yuck!

Is it just me, or is this outfit and hairstyle a little impractical for a real nurse? I mean, one chest pain patient, and her hair is going to be totally flat (unless she is using industrial strength epoxy as a styling product.......) Actually, I think this picture came from a website that was the results of a hair styling competition. I don't remember where this particular style placed, but it explains the lack of any real-world application of this particular look.

Now that I'm working my assigned schedule, I have come to the conclusion that working midshift sucks! There is just something very wrong about going to work at 3 in the afternoon, and working until 3 in the morning. Working that late pretty much ruins the next day too, since you spend a good portion of it in bed. Oh well, I'm hoping that I will only need to work this shift until next summer when we open our new ED, and we basically have to triple our staff on each shift (unless management decides to totally p**s off the nurses and drastically increase our patient ratios). I just have to put in my time, and eventually I will be able to get on days. Until then, I will just have to reset my body clock about 8 hours ahead of where it is now.

Lately I've been a bit confused about what step I want to take next, in terms of my education and career. Now that I'm working in the healthcare field, I know that it is the correct field for me, but I'm already getting frustrated with how some of the doctors do things. Not just what he/she does, but how he/she actually interacts and does her job. It's really frustrating when a patient has been waiting for an hour to see a doc, and the doc is in his work area/cubby hole looking up football scores on the internet.

Combining this frustration with the fact that I've been told for about half of my life I should be a doctor, I've looked into going to medical school. From what I've seen, I need 5 quarters worth of classes to cover the sciences I didn't take earlier and to prep for the MCAT. That being said, I paid my tuition and bought books again today. Starting in a couple of weeks, I will be taking Chemistry 2 (I have transfer credit for chem 1), Biology 1, and Physics 100. Spring quarter will be another crazy quarter with 3 classes, but after than, I will be taking 2 at a time. Over the next year, I will be taking 2 quarters of biology, 4 quarters of physics, and one hell of a lot of chemistry, including organic. Not exactly my idea of fun, but then again, it kind of is.

After all of this, I will take the MCAT. Once I see how well I do on that, I will have to sit down and make the actual decision about what my next degree will be. I will cross that bridge when I get to it......

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