Not really a big deal...
School, school, school. Blah, blah, blah. All the time, right? Yeah, boring. So I won't bore you with the latest and greatest in the land of incontinent older adults, many of whom have dementia and tell you they need to "go bim" even when they're already on the commode and have already gone "bim."
It's about grades and performance this time. This is a highly competitive program and none of us who are in it are "paying customers." You had to have seriously good grades to get in and you have to get better than a C in every class to stay in the program. And the curriculum is difficult not the least of which is due to the fact that this is an accelerated program not an abbreviated one. Yet, I find the work ethic of many of the students appalling.
Every week we have an exam or a quiz or some such thing do and a lot of the students whine about not wanting to study (hey, it's not like I live for studying or anything myself) and then they don't do as well on the exams as they would have liked. And then they commiserate about their grades and inevitably they ask what your grade was and my grade? Almost always an A. Which is good, I know. But, man, have I come to dread the day after the scores are posted and they look at me and my grade is only one of 3 A's in the class and they all got B's and C's. See? Not a big deal but it gets on my nerves after a while.
And on top of that we're doing med administration during our clinicals and that includes everything by mouth, nasogastric tube, topical application and injection (no IV meds until after we graduate) and all the people at my clinical site seem to want to do is jab people with needles. Yes, it's exciting and a little scary especially when you are administering something like heparin or insulin and it requires the signature of 2 RNs before you can give it but, sheesh, there's more to it than that.
There is just so much information to learn and so many things to be on the look out for and I always worry that I'll miss something. Sometimes I worry that my classmates aren't worried enough. Maybe it'll be different in another couple of months after we've all given loads of injections and it starts to become routine. It's like that saying about: what do you call the guy(or gal) who graduates at the bottom of his (or her) medical school class? Doctor. It's the same for us. And I don't know about you, but I want the goddamned valedictorian taking care of me when I'm the hospital.
2 comments:
Yep. I had those same feelings when I was in school. You just have to hope that the system weeds those people out somehow. Unfortunately I know that doesn't always happen in my own profession (but sometimes it does), so I bet it doesn't happen in yours all the time, either.
I hear you. The good thing is (I can only speak of pharmacy here) that the bottom feeders tend to go off to retail. In retail, machines do pretty much all of the work. Errors still happen, but in retail you don't mix chemo, you don't deal with heparin (you give people Lovenox to self-administer), and the techs really do all the work. You just sign off. Hospital pharmacy jobs are incredibly competitive at any hospital that's worth a damn, which is why I always tell people, go to a good hospital and don't live rural. When in doubt, go to the swank private hospital, and then go to the university teaching hospital. Those are the places that hire the best of the best.
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