These special people use play to create and foster a less stressful environment that facilitates healing in the pediatric population!

From the Child Life Council’s website, this is their definition of a Child Life Specialist:

What is a Child Life Specialist?

Child life specialists are trained professionals with expertise in helping children and their families overcome life’s most challenging events.

Armed with a strong background in child development and family systems, child life specialists promote effective coping through play, preparation, education, and self-expression activities. They provide emotional support for families, and encourage optimum development of children facing a broad range of challenging experiences, particularly those related to healthcare and hospitalization. Because they understand that a child’s wellbeing depends on the support of the family, child life specialists provide information, support and guidance to parents, siblings, and other family members. They also play a vital role in educating caregivers, administrators, and the general public about the needs of children under stress.

Child Life plays a vital role in any Children’s Hospital!

For more information on Child Life, visit The Child Life Council.

The one thing pediatric nursing has the most of? Kids. Lots and lots of kids.

Enjoy.

So I made it a goal.

Pediatrics was my second semester of nursing school.  I did a lot of rotations and worked on a lot of different units.  Nothing ever held a candle to pediatric nursing.

When the time came to make a decision about where I wanted to do my precepting, I didn’t hesitate.  Peds.  I wanted to work in peds.  I was told that they school I attended didn’t often get many pediatric slots, but I was in line for one if it became available.  I think around this time is where God really started to intervene in a powerful way. Things happened that I thought were mistakes, but in reality it was God paving the way for the career that I was called to do.  I ended up precepting 12 hours nights with a wonderful nurse at the Children’s Hospital.

And I loved it.

I had some amazing experiences, and while I did a lot of watching and learning – I learned a LOT.  It was the best time I have ever had WORKING.  That’s a great feeling, when you don’t dread coming in to work.

The bad thing about having such an amazing precepting experience though, is that it spoils you.  I couldn’t imagine going back to work with adults on the general med/surg floors.  It just wasn’t a possibility. But I had heard all the horror stories…. new grads don’t get hired into specialties.  New grads don’t get hired straight to units, they have to get in thru residency programs.  But again, God paved the way!

Long story short, I accepted my “official” job offer tonite. I will be working in that same awesome hospital.   I am blessed and humbled.

I am a pediatric nurse.

Awesome.

I took my NCLEX exam last week, on January 12.

What a nerve wracking experience, and I’ll be honest – it’s nothing that I would want to repeat.  I am so glad and thankful that I passed that bad boy on my first try!

This blog will now become less about what life is like as a nursing STUDENT, and more about what life is like as a NEW GRADUATE NURSE!

It’s NCLEX time.

I have my test date scheduled, and now I’m just taking it one day at a time… reviewing the material, and taking practice exams.  I’m trying to keep my preparation activities all low stress, because honestly – what will freaking out do at this point? I have worked my tail off for the past two years in preparation for this moment. I have spent the last twenty four MONTHS studying for  the NCLEX.

I will never be more motivated to pass this exam than I RIGHT NOW.

I’m ready to change the title of this blog…. hopefully in the next couple of weeks this blog will be simply: JUST CALL ME NURSE.  :) It will feel good to finally drop the “Eventually”!

To all of my fellow nursing students that have traveled this long road with me… don’t stop the momentum yet!

YOU GOT THIS!! 

Do these people look excited, or what?

Today we had our class photo done. We all dressed up nicely, according to tradition (the ASN program has traditionally worn white, but thru the years when the nursing profession abandoned the starched whites, we moved to black and white), and met in the misty drizzle on the main campus. The school will hang this portrait in the hall along with all the other graduating classes, dating back to the early 1900s. Well, not THIS photo…. but the actual portrait where we all look very serious, very happy, and very…. NURSELIKE.

In just a little over a week, we will all be graduate nurses…. I can hardly believe it!

Of course, there is the NCLEX to worry about, but I’m going to put that giant dark cloud on the back burner for just a week or so and enjoy this time. It’s GRADUATION TIME!!!!

I get that question a lot…. “Why do you want to be a pediatric nurse?!?!”  When the question is asked, it’s usually accompanied by a scrunching up of the face, and a look of horror as the person asking it envisions deathly ill children dying left and right on their watch.

To me, it’s an easy question to answer: Taking care of children is what I do best.

This week, I am finishing up my preceptorship at a local area Children’s Hospital.  It has been such a fantastic experience.  I have enjoyed every second that I have spent on the floor, and I can say that it has definitely cemented my beliefs that this is what I want to do. That this is where my passion lies, and where my heart is.  Pediatrics.  I have learned so much from these kids and these families in the brief stay that I have had in this hospital.  It’s definitely where I want to be!

One of my friends said to me recently:

“It’s easy to take care of the sick adult, because they have lived their lives and made their choices.  A sick child hasn’t had the chance to do either!”

There is truth to that, but I don’t see it that way.  When I am on that floor taking care of patients, I know that I am making a difference to that child and to that parent on that day.  There is sadness, but there is also a lot of fun.  There isn’t anything like finally getting a smile out of that kid that has given you the death glare for the past 8 hours, or the exhausted “Thank You” from a worried parent.  I’m not only there to take care of the children, but of  entire families.  That is the one thing with pediatrics that you don’t have to deal with on the adult floors.  These kids come with parental baggage.  That’s another thing I hear quite often from friends and other nurses:

“But you have to deal with the PARENTS.”

It’s true. You do have to deal with the parents. I have been one of those parents that the nurses have had to deal with. I remember being scared, nervous, and horrified at what was happening to my child.  They have lost control over the one thing that means the absolute most to them in the whole world.  I am sure as a pediatric nurse I will deal with all kinds of parents… I have already gotten quite a diverse sample just in my short time on the floor for preceptorship.  There are the anxious parents, the needy parents, the questioning parents, the demanding parents… but the worst kind for me have been the absent parents.  Taking care of a child who has no parent at the bedside has presented an entirely new set of challenges for me, but I have learned to look at those little patients as the ones that have the biggest need for a true advocate on their side.

I have heard glorious stories from my fellow peers about their experiences during their preceptorship time.  Code blues, babies being born, open heart surgeries…. and while I have had such a great experience, it has been so different from their excitement.  But you know what? I wouldn’t change a thing.

I am truly loving it.  I love kids.  They are so much fun and a lot more fun than adults.  They tell you the truth, and in some ways they are easier to deal with than adults because they don’t come with all that annoying adult baggage that we all have.    I love developing that “Therapeutic relationship” that everyone talks about in nursing with my patients and their parents.  There is something to be said about it.

Recently in the hospital, I took care of a little guy with a horrible asthma issue – and due to all his meds, he spent most of my shift throwing up.  He was so matter of fact about it, too. “I’m barfing.”  He would remove his little Oxygen mask and just heave into his bucket.  But there is something about being at the bedside in the middle of the night, while mama is getting some well deserved rest while you hold her little one’s head over the emesis basin.  That she trusts you enough to be there and that the little guy trusts you enough to lean on you.  It’s a great feeling.  And no, it’s not the glamorous, exciting, “CODE BLUE” side of nursing, but it’s the side that I like the most.  The really awesome part is now I’m at the point that while I’m in there holding his head while he vomits, I’m also able to watch his O2 sat, listen to him , watch his respirations… assess him, just the little things that are important – but I’m able to do those things and not let them overshadow the “being there” part.

I love that.

I really am a pediatric nurse…. I just need the job and the title to prove it at this point.

And then all of a sudden you are done.

A couple of weeks ago I sat for the very last “exam” of my nursing school career.  It seems as if I just started this journey, and here I am finishing it up. I don’t think that the reality has sunk in yet!

Currently, I am in the final clinical push of my nursing education, called preceptorship.  I was very fortunate to get placed on a wonderful pediatric floor at the local children’s hospital…. transitioning into clinical practice.

Clinical Practice!!!

To all my fellow nursing students…. keep your eyes on the finish line.  Enjoy school. I know it seems like it will last forever, but it really doesn’t.  You will make friends that you will keep forever, and have experiences that will shape your ideals about the way YOU want to practice medicine in the future.

My graduation date is December 16.

The finish line approacheth!