Prompted Post #8- Experience in Nursing

As I have already mentioned frequently I worked at St. Johns Providence for about 7 months last year, and had a good amount of on the job training. What I found was that working in a Hospital is all about professionalism and respect for the patients. You always want to make them feel welcome and safe because nobody liked being in a hospital and all they want is to get in and get out. I worked in occupational Health so i was not seeing all the urgent care patients that had gunshot wounds and stab wounds, and other crazy types of injuries, but I have seen a good amount of cut off fingers and stitch wounds. I have seen a man that lost 3 of his fingers due to a meat slicer at work, we had to clean out the ends of his fingers and i have never seen someone in so much pain ever. We had him dip his fingers into a cleaning solution for 10 minutes and he was whimpering and screaming the whole time becasue all the nerves and the bone of his fingers were exposed to the solution.

Hands on training is way better that any type of textbooks or classes. When you are working on the job you can see what is actually happening in a hospital not just reading through a textbook and memorizing terms and things like that. There is a huge difference between sitting in a lecture hall and listening to someone talk about how to act in a hospital and actually being in a hospital and having to compose yourself to the norms of the workplace because you are actually there. IN any situation I would choose to have hands on training rather than sitting in a lecture or reading through a textbook, i do not think those techniques are nearly as effective.

Having these hands on experiences made it possible for me to see how to truly act in a hospital and what the language and attitude of nurses and doctors really is. Sure someone can tell you what to do and how to act but it makes it so much more real to actually be living it and helping the RN's with their rounds and seeing what kind of people truly come trhough the door to be treated. Also there is an amount of getting used to seeing things that might gross people out, like I mentioned earlier I could see this mans metacarpals sticking out of his skin, which is a lot different than looking at a picture of bones in an anatomy textbook. On the site training is so much more effective in teaching people what to expect in their field than any lecture could ever be and I highly suggest doing internships and volunteering before you enter any field because that is the only way to truly know what you are getting into.