It's a Small World After All

As a few of you know I have started back to work with a nursing agency. This is my first time working in Texas and oh man is it different than Utah as for the organizational things. I truly appreciate my education and background while I worked at an IHC Hospital in Utah. They were organized and we knew our protocols. Although I had a good work experience for my first shift, I did not like the laid back nursing policies. For instance, in Utah, when I recovered a post surgical patient, I knew that I would be checking on the patient VERY often (every 15 minutes for the first hours, then every 30 minutes x 2, then every hour x 4, then every 4 x 24). So when I took a post surgical patient the other day I asked the charge nurse what their protocol was for rounding and assessing my new post surgical patient and she said, "Oh, whenever. Once a shift is good." WHAT!!! Is she honestly telling me that she would only assess her post surgical patient once a shift-Not me!!! So I figured it would be better to go "overboard" how we did it in Utah vs. adopting this nurse’s philosophy. Better safe than sorry is my philosophy.

One thing I am grateful for is how nice the nurses were to me. It kind of felt like going to nursing school clinicals again-you never knew if you were going to orient with a "nice nurse" or one that would make your day hell.

The paperwork was quite different from what I was used to. Frankly, IHC is much more organized with charting and what is required of the nurses. I guess it will just take a little getting used to the way they do it here. Aside from all the confusion, I absolutely LOVED being back to work and seeing patients again.

Another interesting fact about my first shift back was that I know I was blessed by my Heavenly Father. I know this because my first two patients were LDS and as nice as can be. How random is that? The first lady I had met before at a girls LDS dinner and the second LDS patient has an interesting story. She asked me where I moved from and I told her Utah. As we were talking she asked if I was LDS. I, of course said, yes and she said she could tell by my presence when I came into her room, (What a nice complement) and she was LDS, too. To make a long story short we played the "do you know game." She mentioned that she attended BYU around 2001 and I mentioned to her that I just missed her at BYU because I attended from 1998-2000 and cheered there. When she heard that, she asked if I knew, Katie Bills. For those of you who don't know, I was good friends and cheered with Katie at BYU. She passed away from a skiing accident in 1999. My face just lit up and I knew Katie must have had something to do with my patient assignment today. My patient actually grew up with Katie and knew her from church. Talk about a small world. Here is a picture of our squad. Katie is in the bottom row in the center, right below me.