Sunday, March 10, 2013

Grasshopper

I am orienting a new grad. She was a patient care tech in the department for about a year and I always thought she was pretty awesome. When I found out she was going to be an RN with us I was excited for about 30 seconds... then I realized that she has such great potential and would probably be ruined by some lazy twat and turned into a cookie cutter nurse. Kind of like the kids in the Pink Floyd video... The Wall.  How you are oriented makes such a difference in the type of nurse you become. So after a few minutes of thought I decided to ask to be her preceptor. She had been assigned a pretty decent day shift nurse so I didn't want night shift to fuck her up. Did I mention I haven't oriented anyone before? 11 years and they never asked.

So I call her my little Grasshopper. She is smart, motivated, young (21) and funny as hell to work with. She did a lot of fundamentals on day shift and with me is working on critical thinking and ICU patients. We have "Teaching Turds" which are little nuggets of information that you learn and hang on to.

Teaching Turd #1: Nothing good comes from the bus station!
Teaching Turd #2: Mr. B ALWAYS has bedbugs. Decon him first, ask questions later.

Our first night together we had a great neuro patient who had two emergent burr holes placed. We also worked a code and then Mr B showed up. When we took his shirt off all I saw was bedbugs and eggs. He is so old and so crazy that he thought the bugs were just dry skin. So we gowned up and stripped the old guy down, bagged his things and took them outside. Then we had to take him into the decon shower. You would think getting hosed down by 2 cute nurses would be a dream come true.... but he howled...and I mean HOWLED like a cat in the tub the whole time. This man had bugs everywhere you could think of.

Once he was clean we offered him sweats and a t shirt from our Forensic stash. He was mad that we trashed his not-so-tighty and VERY not-so-whities... so Grasshopper offered him all we had.... women's underpants!

I knew I liked this girl!

I think she will be fantastic. Its like having a little me running around (God Help the ER).

9 Comments:

Blogger rugged breed said...

Wow I've learned a lot from this post thanks a lot!
Zero Dramas

4:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Reality check: re-read ur previous posts for insight on why, in 11 years, u were never tapped to orient a new hire

12:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

feNice to see you back!! Looks like a lot has transpired since you went off the air! Glad things are good with you! I'm out of the Keys now, new job, new husband too. Kid's in college now all grown up, and I'm starting to relaxxxxx again! Hope to hear from you soon-Mojitogirl.

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