It's official: I have been on the west side of the mountains for a full week. Although it has been a week loaded with orientations and trips to Target for apartment furnishings (side note: I have never spent as much money at Target as I have this week, and it's only been on necessities, not the usual Target gems), I can already tell the decision to work as a traveling nurse is one of my best to date. Don't get me wrong, I truly love and miss my family and am eternally grateful that I was able to live with them the last few years so I could get a solid financial foundation...but holy shit! I had no idea what I was missing out on! The one thing that was actually making me the most nervous about leaving home is the fact that I have never truly lived by myself and I wasn't even going to have a pet during my traveling adventures. As it turns out, living solo is a breath of fresh air (figuratively and literally...my room at home was not so fresh with how much crap I had/have in there). I didn't realize how...well, not independent, I felt living at home. I'm finally able to spread my wings and figure life out on my own, for which I am beyond excited. Hopefully after the next few nights of work I'll be able to explore and go on more adventures during my week off. Speaking of work...
The hospital I'm at is quite different than what I'm used to. Actually, entirely different. I'm realizing now that I took the painted walls, huge rooms, color-coordinated bins in the clean room, and Epic completely for granted. Yep, you heard me right, nursing friends: we take Epic for granted. Remember waaay back before Epic when we had *gasp* PAPER charts? Yeah, I didn't either, until I walked into my first day of orientation and saw doctors scribbling orders in charts, secretaries putting the orders in the computer, and faxing them to wherever they needed to go. The next 12 weeks are going to be full of chart checks, illegible paper orders, and actually using the five rights of medication administration with paper MARs ("Can you please tell me your name and birthday? Thank you." Compare all meds to MAR, but first flip through eight pages to find that first of 30 meds...). From here on out, every time I think about cursing Epic, I'm going to take myself back to this time, recall the drag that is paper charting, reconsider whatever colorful language I would use in reference to Epic, and put on a happy(ish) face. In addition to old school charting, the hospital itself is very old school and I'm realizing how very spoiled we are at KMC. That whole Planetree business actually makes a quite the difference- the art on the wall, the light fixtures, a nice paint job. It's sad to me that there are still hospitals out there that don't have the funding for things like this and still feel like a stuffy hospital. It's also sad that I feel like I'm going to have to actively try to not let this dampen my spirits-- just because it feels like a hospital, it doesn't mean I can't make a patient's stay more pleasant with decent attitude...hopefully. Tomorrow night marks my first night on my own and the first of three in a row. Curious to see how I feel after 36 hours of white walls and attempting to decipher what that doctor actually ordered....wait...whose signature is that?...
