Open Blog post #1

My first open post is going to be about how I got into the nursing field and what I want to do in it. In my senior year of high school I got an internship at a hospital called St. Johns Providence. In was an urgent care and I worked on the first floor in occupational health. I would go in everyday for about 4 hours and help the other nurses take care of patients. I learned a lot of really cool things their and really felt like I was a registered nurse. They would let me bring patients in and take their vitals, I would get their height and weight then take them over to a board with different letters for a vision test. I learned that when performing a pre physical one must check vitals, then perform a vision test for color, distance and depth. Next was an audiogram which is used for hearing and after they did that I would hand them off to the Physician Assistant and I would be done. It was always very important at the hospital to wash your hands a lot and always wear gloves to make sure everything stays really clean and in tip top shape. It was really awesome to help out at the hospital and I felt like I was learning how to do everything really well. All the nurses I worked with where very nice and super helpful, always showing me little tricks and tips for things like getting blood pressures and things of that nature. Another thing they had me do a lot was drug testing. Since it was occupational health many people had to drug test for their companies, and it was a fairly simple procedure. You always had to make sure people were not bringing in fake pee or anything of that nature so you had to make them empty their pockets before they went in the bathroom. They even made us take the soap out of the bathroom until I would have the sample in my hand. We would have to wait for the temperature strip to show that the urine was the right temperature before I would put it into the machine. It was easy because the machine I put it into would test it on the spot then send the results to whatever company needed them so I never had to do too much computer work. This experience  really helped solidify what I wanted to go into in college and was a great opportunity to learn basic nursing skills. I will  volunteer again at a hospital when I have the time because I also need the hours for applying to nursing school. I think it will help me grow into a better nurse if I spend more time in a hospital setting and learning in a hands on sort of way.