Nursing School

I wanted to catch everyone up with my nursing life. I'm in my 4th semester in the BYU college of nursing and I'll graduate in April with a bachelor's of science in nursing as well as my RN (as long as I pass the boards)!! This semester my clinicals are in the Intensive Care Unit at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center (pictured below). I am really enjoying the ICU and even though the patient's are in critical condition, I enjoy having only 1 or 2 patients to focus on. I wish I could take pictures inside the unit of me doing cool things, but unfortunately, the privacy laws prevent that. =)

One bummer in the ICU is that most of the patients can't talk because they're on a ventilator so you can't really interact in that way. It is neat to form relationships with the family members and build trust with them. On my shift last week my patient was doing better and then just started going down hill. The patient's grown-up daughter was there when we told her that we would have to re-intubate her mom (a step back in her progress for sure). She was having a rough time with it because she thought her mom was out of the woods and said to me (a complete stranger until just hours before this) "I need a hug." I enjoy being a nurse (well a student nurse at least) and getting to help complete strangers every day.