All nursing school, all the time

Returning to the abandoned blog. It's been busy, although less stressful than last year, I think. Somehow we're already over halfway through the semester and I'll be done with this program in 7 months. The supposed class from hell, Complex Health Alterations, has proven to be not all that bad, as long as I do the reading. My lazy ass has managed to get it together enough to do quite well, which has been a nice surprise.

Clinicals have been a million times better than they were last year. Especially during first semester, I dreaded clinicals. I was thrilled when they were done for the semester. But we've had several weeks of them now and they haven't been too bad. Okay, I should clarify that. We finished our acute care/med-surg clinical last week and, apart from the pain-in-the-ass-ness of having to go to a hospital over an hour away and be gone for two nights a week, it was great. Learned a lot, got called "an angel" (HA!) by a patient, got to start my first IV. It was a successful start on the first try, but it wasn't a particularly proud moment. Mainly because once I got it into the vein, I started shaking and completely forgot what to do next, and ended up with blood on the floor. Hey, it happens. The very nice RN who was overseeing me quickly took over and got the saline lock on, and I taped it up. This clinical really was a good experience overall.

Now we're in mental health, and I'm surprised at how much I don't like it. It's not like last year, I don't dread going back next week and I'm learning a lot, but it's getting to me. It's hard to go home and set it aside, and I haven't been able to do it. I just keep thinking about it. It's kind of horrifying to be faced with live evidence of just how much psychological damage one person can inflict on another human being.

Before we started this rotation, I thought I would really like it and might be interested in working in it for a while, but not so much. I think you have to have a certain combination of empathy, excellent communication skills, and an ability to care about what happens to people, but not too much--be dispassionate. I can do empathy, I can do communication, but I have a hard time with the dispassion. It's probably something I should work on in general, but I doubt I'll ever get it enough to work in mental health.