Prompted Post #3:Interview with an Registered Nurse

When I was working at St. Johns Providence hospital I worked under an RN named Shay, and I decided to do my interview with her. I conducted the interview via phone because she obviously does not live in East Lansing. I had prepared a series of questions for her including things like if she liked her job, what she had to do to get there and how long she had been doing it, along with the required questions about the misconceptions in her field.

I started off the interview by asking if she enjoyed the job that she did. She works in occupational health at the moment and she stated that she enjoys occupational health because it is not as intense as the work she was doing in urgent care, or the emergency room. She continued on to say that when she was working in those more intense areas of the hospital she was younger and more willing to put in the long, late hours, but now that she is older and in her last year before retirement she really does like to work her structured hours in a less intense environment. Considering that occupational health is usually people that need physicals for work or drug tests, its a pretty lax department. I then asked her what she had to do to become a registered nurse. She explained that when she was becoming a nurse it was a lot less intense of a process. She said that back in her day she didn't even go to college she just went straight to nursing school for 2-3 years(her exact words)and came out a nurse. This made me a little upset just because here at Michigan State the nursing program is extremely competitive and becoming an RN is no easy feat anymore. I then went  on to ask her about the common misconceptions of the job. She stated that a lot of people think that being a nurse is an easy job but most of the time the nurses do more work in a hospital than anyone. Also she said that people often think that working at a hospital means that everyone that walks through the door has some sort of deadly disease or something but most of the time its only for check-ups or minor issues. She said that people watch to many shows like "House" and "ER" but that is not actually how a hospital works.

My next question had to do with how communication is important in a hospital. Shay said that it is one of the most important things in a hospital setting. She talked about how if the RN's do not communicate well with the patients than it could be hard to find out what is wrong with the person. Also if the nurse does not communicate what the patient said to the doctor than it could cause confusion. On top of that since she works in occupational health she always has to communicate the results of drug tests and physicals to whatever job sent the patient to get the tests. Overall she said that without communication a hospital would not run smoothly at all. That was the last question I asked her because I was not exactly sure what the "ask her what they write and how they write it" question meant. I learned that becoming a nurse is a lot more difficult now than it was back when Shay was starting off , but that just means that I need to work harder to achieve my goals.