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Powerful Domestic Violence Awareness Ads at Street Anatomy

Reason 862 why I love reading head nurse's blog:

Google Reader (77): "First of all, your average student is scared to death of your average patients. They're not people to the nursing student; they're huge bundles of foreign problems who are likely to die suddenly while gasping out that it was all the student's fault. Having an experienced nurse at your side makes you a much less scared student (unless the nurse is Peevie McGripersons, that is)."


I am able to smile carefully at this now, but it was absolutely Not Funny At All the first clinical semester, oh no, it was deadly serious. My friend and I would spend our carpool hour re-living and debriefing, each offering examples of things that we were worried was wrong or dangerous, and the other offering the best reassurances she could while white-knuckling about her own day. Often as not, after I was safely home and the the kid safely abed, I'd end up bursting into tears over stubbing my toe or a laundry crisis, sobbing with all the pent-up anxiety and tension. I finally decided that this level of reaction was a bit above and beyond Normal Nursing Student Concern, and chose to trot on down to Campus Health for a consultation that ended in a prescription for buproprion 150ml PO qdaily. But I have not yet spoken to a nursing student (and even graduate nurses) who will deny some version of this fear.

(and yes, I would do things like pull my patient's chart up the next week, to find out that even though I had tugged on her newly placed JG tube while wheeling the feeding pump around the bed, everything turned out fine and it didn't have to be re-sutured or begin to bleed later or anything.)