One Grateful Nurse
This year marks the 30th year since we left the storied halls of St. Paul College of Iloilo. Molded in the Paulinian way of caring, we have proudly carried on that torch daily in our respective practice settings. Despite the challenges that came along our way, we continue to count our blessings both professionally and personally. For this reason, please allow this grateful nurse to reminisce and reflect on how we have touched lives.
Here are the links to the podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/PTqNWTrFmyb and https://open.spotify.com/episode/6gWjhDaqXZ2jZqvr0tfWPX?si=9ecc4716327a4eb1
No, I will not bore you with the chronological account of my nursing practice. I have already written about that. If anything, I just want to focus on how my practice has evolved dizzyingly fast over the last five years.
As a Pediatric nurse in 2018, I thought that I was already at my professional pinnacle. Well, I may not have been at the “proverbial” top of my practice, but I was contented. No, not just contented…
I was happy and contented!
http://pexels-gustavo-fring-7447010
Pediatric Nursing
Not everyone is cut out to be a Pediatric nurse. To be fair, I will be the first to concede that I am not cut out to be an Operating Room or Emergency Department nurse. So, the fact that I was able to be a Certified Pediatric Nurse for 14 years before our unit closed, I am one grateful nurse.
Aside from enjoying taking care of kids, I adored our little work family. Even the parents of our chronically ill patients became family to us. We all agreed that we will all grow old and wrinkly as Pediatric nurses.
Or so we thought…
In what turned out to be one unexpected turn of events, our organization decided to close our Pediatric unit, so we felt lost and confused. Coming from different backgrounds before converging in Pediatrics, we feared starting all over again. New patient population, new work environments, new workflows… In a word: new everything!
We were not ready to leave our unit, our parties, or our March birthdays. However, ready or not, we had to go. We were scattered like ants. Thankfully, though, we kept our friendships and our periodic gatherings as much as we can.
Flying Solo
As if the pain of leaving my work family behind was not challenging enough, I was, at that time, halfway through graduate school. I didn’t know what the future held for me then, but, I got the degree completed with flying colors. Another grateful nurse moment, indeed!
Then Covid 19 hit! The world was at a standstill. Nevertheless, as nurses, that word doesn’t exist in our vocabulary. We still worked, even harder than before. Fortunately for me, I was tapped to conduct nursing classes to introduce our new electronic health record (EHR) system, so I taught from home for the most part. That was my first official foray into the world of nursing informatics.
While I was hesitant at first, upon my manager’s encouragement, I shyly submitted my application to an open position for a clinical informaticist. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I figured “what have I got to lose?”
Long story short, I was hired for the job. Need I say how hard it was for me to start from scratch on a specialty I was so unfamiliar with? Even harder to fathom is I only had a handful of people I can call on as my resources. As the days passed, though, I was able to network with other colleagues from other sites within our organization. Now, I won’t be able to function without my newfound friends.
Continuously Learning
As I previously mentioned, every day presents a new opportunity to learn in my current job. I help frontline clinicians with their access or documentation issues. I still teach classes, actually more applications now than when I first started. In all of these, collaboration is the name of the game. If there is an issue with intravenous pump (IV) interoperability with the EHR, a group of us from different disciplines has to put our heads together to investigate why that problem occurred. More than that, we have to come up with recommendations on how to mitigate and prevent a similar event from happening in the future.
While I barely have any patient contact, I still feel useful. Instead of getting that instantaneous gratification when a patient heals, I measure my accomplishment in terms of how many coworkers I have helped to “work smarter, not harder.” Or if a clinical decision support system worked efficiently in improving patient outcomes.
Yes, another grateful nurse moment for me!
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t only help our end users. The fact is, I learn more from them or from investigating their concerns. And I do have an insatiable need to know more…
Thus, that recent pursuit of earning my second nursing certification in the field of informatics.
Those who know me may ask: “what’s next, Grace?’
Well, as lifelong learners, we, nurses, thirst for knowledge. This is a need in my field, wherein what I got from my graduate school may already be obsolete soon.
Technology changes in a wink of an eye. If I am to survive in this field until my age of retirement, I have to keep up. Whether through continuing education, experiential learning, or earning a post-graduate degree, it is imperative to not stay stagnant.
So, I am happy to share this with you as my latest grateful nurse moment!
It has been an eventful 30 years, indeed!
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam which in English means To God be the Greater Glory!