Say it to my Face
There will be student loans available to save your soul - but not your life:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nursing-professional-degree-trump-bill-b2870045.html
As an R.N. BSN from a Texas university and with a career primarily in critical care, many lives have been dependent on my critical thinking skills and in-depth experience. I have worked in Surgical, Cardiac and Neuro ICU. The latter, was the most satisfying. Bedside care involved clients with profound traumatic brain injuries and high C-spine injuries. We kept most of our clients for months, and not weeks.
I worked for five years in a very specialized area known as Interventional Radiology, working with fellowship-trained radiologists. Whether assisting with cerebral angiograms, CT-guided biopsies, spinal fluid collections, monoclonal antibody administrations, and nuclear medicine procedures (with the use of radioisotopes) - this extremely high-stress environment was offered to only the most qualified of R.N.
My work as a staff nurse in PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit) placed me in a fast-paced environment which included management of ventilators, arterial lines, and complex operations. Pharmacokinetics of intravenous Fentanyl, Morphine, and Dilaudid, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and vasopressors required a basic knowledge of chemistry, hemodynamics related to cardiac function, and respiratory function beginning with the brain and extending to the pulmonary system. What is in a 3 cc. syringe can kill with the same efficiency as a projectile when it is placed in the wrong set of hands.
PACU also required night call to cover emergency surgeries. Worst night? It was shortly after midnight when an anesthesiologist and I stood beside each other. Each one of us, providing mechanical ventilation with an Ambu bag for our individual client until the Code team could arrive to assist. My client was post-craniotomy. He survived but he will never remember what I did for him.
Longest day? It stretched from seven a.m. one morning until 2:30 p.m. the next day. I worked all day. Was called in at ten p.m. and worked until five-thirty a.m. Headed out for donuts for the crew and returned to work from 7-2:30 p.m. without a break.
Worst nights? Foreign body removals from the rectum. If it wasn't an old-fashioned apothecary bottle it was... well, whatever anyone could manage to have shoved up their ass. "I fell cleaning the garage and landed on the Coke bottle." That was my favorite. The least favorite of stories? The cop who was walking around his house with his baton shoved up his rectum and tripped and perforated his colon. These are all classified as "Tales from the Crypt". Unbelievable but true.
Rape victims? I have dealt with both male and female rape victims. Gunshot wounds? Bloody. Drug overdoses and combative drunkards? More than a few.
Death... death... the one that does not survive. The family member becomes your next patient.
Nurses bottle the tears of their clients. And then we are capable of spilling them all, splashing them down our own cheeks in moments of great sadness. We are a humane profession.
Say it to my face. Tell me that I am not a professional.
Tammy Swofford, R.N. BSN
>:( A terrible omission!
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