Life in bullet points...

1. I have been an inconsistent blogger lately. Life has just been too nuts. I would like to say that it will get better but it won't...

2. ...cause I am officially MOVING in less than two weeks :(

3. I found a house! (see bullet 2) I love my new house. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it enough that moving over the holidays is worth it for this house. I have pictures of it somewhere but they aren't accesible now so all I will say is that it is 1,400 square feet of glory!

4. Recently I went on a date with Chris to an arcade. I spent probably close to 30 minutes playing this one game where its like a wheel of fortune type thing. You hit the button and whatever number the wheel stops at... thats the amount of tickets you get. 1,000 being the jackpot. 30 minutes... no jackpot. Chris on the other hand goes... "Let me try" and on his first hit gets 1,000. Seriously?!

5. Those 1,000+ tickets = me getting the biggest hello kitty doll ever. :) So worth being put to shame.

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6. In about 12 hours I will be driving to Arizona with Chris and his cousin. It should take us about 14 hours or so to get there... let's pray I can stay awake and sane for the drive.

7. I am SO excited for black friday shopping this year. Mainly because of the fun things we will buy but also because it will be mine and Chris' one year anniversary! yay!

8. I cannot wait for Thanksgiving food!

9. This year I will be missing my favorite BFF Thanksgiving with the peeps and I am heartbroken :( but luckily there are things like facetime to help make it a little easier.

10. I passed my CCRN exam! About a month ago actually but I officially got the certificate in the mail yesterday! Yay!

What are you up to this week friends? Any fun Thanksgiving plans?!



 

Managing the Gap

When I first started working in nursing I actually thought that maybe, someday I would end up in management. You know.... years down the line when I was tired and burnt out from bedside nursing I could switch over to the administrative side of things and still feel useful in my career.

Wrong. 

The more nursing experience I have the more I realize that management in nursing is the exact opposite of everything I love about the job. I recently want to a "Journey to Magnet Excellence" conference through my hospital and it was surprisingly disheartening. Now, I know I tend to be a critical person... I am an ICU nurse after all, but I did actually go to this event with high hopes. I enjoy a challenge. I enjoy taking pride in my work and I enjoy being pushed to always become better. Still, the reality between the ideal and the actual is so far and wide. 

I know that in the nursing profession, research is important; it's what makes us better as a whole and individually and it improves patient outcomes. At least that's the idea, right?

I think I'm finding though, that what is done at the bedside and what is done in everyday practice is so completely different than what nursing executives try to implement into hospital policy. What is expected of the everyday bedside nurse is sometimes just not possible! 

Save money, prevent infections, work short staffed, but make sure you find time to take a break so that you never call in sick and waste the hospital's money. Audit charts and physician orders, document on time and with incredible detail. Reduce patient falls but also reduce the amount of restraint use. Decrease the amount of sedatives and chemical restraints used on patients but live without simple resources that will make it a safer work environment for patients and staff. 

Seriously, by the end of the conference I was so disheartened.  I felt like my job was impossible... being a good nurse according to your patient and being a good nurse according to your boss......

two very separate and often times unrelated things.

There are so many roles we fill as nurses. We are the front line workers. We are the ones who coordinate between all of the different services. We are the ones who know more about the patient than probably anyone else on the unit. We are the ones who put up with verbal and sometimes physical abuse from patients and family members. We are the ones that go without bathroom breaks and food for sometimes an entire day. We are the ones that have to be patient advocates....

But who advocates for us?

I am lucky to be in an area where nurses are paid well and because I work for the government I have good benefits. I love my job and I will always try to become a better nurse than I am today. Still, its hard not to look at the bar above and wonder just how in the world we will ever jump that high.

Magnet Conference

This week I was sent by my nurse manager to attend a conference through our hospital. The conference was about our journey in becoming a magnet accredited hospital. Magnet accreditation is specific to nursing and was originally created to prevent nursing shortages and increase retention rates for nursing in hospitals. If a health care organization is magnet accredited it signifies that the facility has better patient outcomes and exemplary nursing care.

In short if it is magnet certified... you want to work there and you want to get care there.

It was a two day conference with a ton of information that I'm still processing through. Unfortunately, I left with more questions than answers and in many ways felt like it was management's "Hoo rah!" as opposed to a championing of staff nurses becoming involved in this process. (The whole premise of the magnet system is about self governance, higher autonomy and a decentralized organizational structure.)

At any rate, I'm exhausted and to top it all off I had to switch my sleep schedule to go to it (us night shift folks don't like getting up early... it's why we work nights) and now its 4am and I have to work a 12 hour day shift today.     *sigh*

Oh well. When things become exhausting I just take a look at these and I close my eyes and picture myself here 

or maybe here

and life seems a little bit better... quieter after that.

Happy Friday Friends! The weekend is almost here!