Tiring, yet fulfilling week

Very busy at work this week, particularly today. My preceptor has almost completely stepped back, leaving me to handle things on my own unless I specifically ask her input on my plans or for a hand in boosting in patients in bed and the like. It's stressful doing the job without her help, but she and I agree that I'm ready and I best get as much practice handling the work solo because I'll be switching to night shift soon enough. After a couple weeks with a preceptor to get the hang of the work flow at night, I'll be on my own. Of course I can still ask the other nurses for help or input, but the responsibility will be mine with all the little mental freak-outs that come with shouldering it.

As I said, today was busy. I started the morning with one patient, admitted a fresh surgical patient, transferred the first one to the floor, admitted a third patient, transferred the second one out, then managed the third until shift change. Despite it being so busy, I had time to fall in love with my first two patients. Though their quite different backgrounds played a big part in why I was so taken with them, for confidentiality reasons I can't go into detail and changing the details to hide their identities just defeats the point. I can say that their motivation was a joy. Too often post-surgical patients just want to lie still in bed. These patients wanted to get better and followed the medical plan of care to achieve that. More than once I told one of them, "I wish I could shoot a video of you to show other patients how it's done!" I'll have to remember them both when I have the inevitable bad day.

I still really like my job. Yay.