Libby's great week at her internship

This past week has been really great at my internship. Sister Maart is the Staff Nurse in the Maternity ward, and she has become like a mother to Collette, Mariko and I. She is the one who oversees where we go and calls other wards to see if we can spend the day there to observe. All of the nurses in the Maternity ward have been so kind to us and take time out of their day to get to know us, which has been really nice. On Monday, Sister Maart set us up in the ICU ward. I was placed with Sister Lisa to shadow for the day. She was amazing and so much fun to work with! She explained everything she was doing step by step and obviously really wanted me to learn all about what was going on. She had a patient who was in the ICU because he had a heart attack. His respiratory rate was very low and he had to wear an oxygen mask. But he was a very sweet older gentleman and at one point he asked if I could hold his hand. Of course I said yes and he said it was just nice to hold another person’s hand again because he had been feeling so lonely since he’s been in the hospital. His nephew came to visit him and Sister Lisa and I had a nice chat with him. Then he went to get an appletiser for his uncle and when he came back, he had bought two chocolate bars for Sister Lisa and I which I thought was so sweet! I went for a lunch break and when I came back the patient had forgotten who I was because he has such little oxygen going to his brain which was screwing with his memory. It was definitely saddening and made me realize that this is something you face every day when working in a ward like the ICU.

On Tuesday Mariko and I were able to see our second natural birth which was really cool. It’s definitely a learning experience and almost quite shocking how it all takes place. This woman was experiencing a particularly difficult labor but she ended up safely delivering her baby and it was the cutest newborn I had ever seen! Later that day Mariko and I were also able to take part in a mock resuscitation. And by take part I mean Mariko participated as I watched because I have absolutely no idea how to resuscitate someone. It was really cool though and all the nurses got involved and they practiced on a dummy exactly what they would do if a patient started crashing. The nurses are very professional and took it really seriously!

Yesterday (Wednesday) Collette and I attended the new employees’ orientation.  It was a very interesting meeting where they were going through every difficult department and protocol and so on within the hospital. The facilitator did a great job getting the newbies involved in the conversation and asking them many questions, sort of testing them. I learned a lot from that meeting about how the hospital operates and the rules they have to follow so it was a really good experience!