Personal Narrative: My Clinical Experience At Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Habersham County, Tom was feeling slightly nervous as he exited the staff lounge and entered the hustle and bustle of County Hospital’s ER to begin his first shift as an RN. The first few hours of his shift passed slowly as Tom mostly checked vital signs and listened to patients complain about various aches, pains, coughs, and sniffles. He realized that the attending physician, Dr. Greene, who was rather “old school” in general about how he interacted with nursing staff, wanted to start him out slowly. Tom knew, though, that the paramedics could bring in a trauma patient at any time.

I stepped behind the front desk of Spirit Medical Center’s emergency room to begin the night shift of April 23, 2002. Half of the rooms were already filled and my coworkers busied themselves moving throughout the sterile halls. If it weren’t for my pager calling me and two other nurses to take on a patient that would be arriving shortly in an ambulance, I would have been a part of the rush. Meanwhile, I observed the friends and families that occupied the uncomfortable wooden chairs in the waiting room. The majority of them wore a somber expression on their faces, but there were the few that had tears streaming down their cheeks uncontrollably as they took advantage of the conveniently located tissue boxes. My observations were soon distracted by the sound of approaching sirens.

Mercy Medical Center is where it all started. On August 4th, 2004, 6:47 p.m. I was born. My name all started as a simple idea 4 years before I was even born. It originated from an American singer-songwriter Shannon Hoon, the lead vocalist of Blind Melon. Eventually, Shannon had a daughter, and named her Nico Blue. My mom liked the name and decided she would name her first child that. Though my first name isn’t actually Nico, it’s Nicolynn. She added her middle name to the first half, leaving me with no middle name.

My educational fear in the past was during my first week off ICU orientation, I was assigned an admission from the ER of a post cardiac arrest middle aged patient who was placed on a therapeutic hypothermia. I verbalized to the Charge Nurse of being hesitant to accept the admission since I’m fresh off orientation. She told me “this would be a good experience for you”. I want to keep good positive impression to my colleague being a new nurse of my new unit and took on the mission to accept the assignment. After receiving a report, the unconscious patient arrived on our unit on a ventilator with hypothermic jacket and with multiple drips. My heart started to pound and said to myself “what am I getting into, transferring here in ICU is a mistake, and I just want to cry”. While being shaky, I took good long deep breaths. After the patient was situated the on the bed, I carried on the task according to the doctors’ orders and the protocols. I stayed in communication with my charge nurse for assistance, questions and moral support. I succeeded the patient care uneventfully on a 12 gruesome hours by working and collaborating with the charge nurse, the senior RNs as a

When I arrive to the Trauma ICU 4800 unit, all of the nurses were already being followed by other students. The nurse in charge had me follow several different nurses, so I was able to observed several different patient cases. The first patient had received a triple bypass open-heart surgery. The patient had received a creatinine blood test. The patient had a dialysis machine next to them, which was used to function as the kidneys since the patient’s kidneys were not functioning correctly. Also, the patient’s body temperature was lowered from having a taken cool liquids so the nurses were keeping him warm with a bair hugger, which was a machine that helped regulate the patient's’ body temperatures.

A unique experience that I had at Norton Women’s and Children’s Hospital was that we also covered labor and delivery and the mother-baby unit. Most of our programming and interventions on these units involved bereavement and grief support, sibling education/support, and memory/legacy making. From my coursework and volunteer experiences at the University of Charleston, South Carolina, I had a solid foundational background with grief and bereavement through our child life courses, our death and dying course, our experiences with Shannon’s Hope, and our experiences with Rainbows. A family is forever changed when there is a loss of a family member, specifically a child (Pearson, 2005). A parents reaction to the death of a child greatly differs

While waiting, I yearned for answers; I wanted to know structure of the hospital, the reason for the constant beeping sound, the number of surgeries scheduled, patients that were being treated nearby, and the quickest way to them. Being sly, I would sneak off and try to get a glimpse of an actual chart. After his surgery, my grandfather was quickly escorted to ICU; “ICU, ICU, what could this mean?”

Nearing the end of my shift in the Emergency Department, I was requested to accompany a patient while the nurse readied the discharge papers. Upon entering the bay, I met a very small and fragile patient who was anxious to go home. Conflicted between my primary duties and responsibilities to complete training for two inexperienced volunteers, I decided to put forth my interests in teaching by demonstrating compassionate care to my trainees. Although the patient repeatedly refused my assistance, I gave my best effort to calm her as I cloaked a warm blanket around her. As I listened to her confide in me of all of her hospital anxieties, I was shocked from the lack of quality care she had received which made her feel more sick after the first

Working as a scribe in the San Bernardino Emergency Room has provided me with many different types of medical experiences, from seeing gunshot wounds and various lacerations to strokes and ST elevated myocardial infarctions to hypoglycemia and hyperkalemia. Observing the treatment process from triage to disposition has been an exciting experience, in which every patient encounter has only taught me more about the field of medicine and spiked my interests in learning more about the human body. It is truly an amazing experience watching people come in scared and worried, but in the matter of a few hours after various medications, diagnostic studies and procedures they are more comfortable than when they came in. Through this experience, I have

My supervisor, one of the head nurses, hurriedly pulled me to the corner of the bleach white hospital room and directed me to put on gloves, an eye mask, and a face mask. I felt as if I was preparing for war as I put on all of the required gear. The sound of expensive shoes click-clacked down the hallway indicating the arrival of two doctors who rushed into the room and shouted out orders to the staff while pulling the doors to the room shut along with the curtains. Two doctors, eight nurses, an intern, and a dying patient squeezed into the already claustrophobic ten by fifteen-foot room. The machine monitoring the patient’s vital signs continued to beep incessantly as my heart rate accelerated. Throughout my internship, I had never seen a patient in critical condition until that moment. I remembered my teacher’s advice if we were ever in a situation such as this: take a few deep breaths and sit down if you feel like you’re going to pass out. In that

In Bed Number Ten, Sue Baier shares her first-hand account of both her painful experiences and her lengthy recovery in the ICU setting. She was struck with the disabling effects of Guillain-Barre syndrome which resulted in her being admitted into an Intensive Care Unit. While there, her communication and mobility was very limited and made it very difficult for many of the staff to passionately and effectively take care of her. She describes multiple accounts of nurses and staff who were task oriented and failed to meet her physical and emotion needs. Her sense of isolation and inhumane treatment transpires from the pages to the heart of the reader. However, in the book, we observe a few staff that were sensitive to her condition and took care of her the way a person should be taken care of. Sue’s hardship and experience is one of perseverance in her time in the ICU and gives an outlook of how to be sensitive to critical care patients, as it should be.

Millions of individuals worldwide are admitted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) yearly after a traumatic, life threatening event. Family members keep a vigilant watch over their loved ones during their most vulnerable periods such as being restrained, sedated, and mechanically ventilated, resulting in anxiety for the family during the critical times of hospitalization and for the patient after discharge because they have no recollection of what occurred during these stressful moments. The majority of the patients admitted to the ICU are very appreciative of the medical staff for assisting them in their journey through the unpredictable days

It was what felt like the hottest day of the year July 31 in New York City. Joan Ormsby was returning some clothes, she had received at her baby shower on this very hot day. She remembered that she had a doctor's appointment at 11am that day she rushed her usual shopping routine. She arrived at the OBGYN office, by herself, at 11am. Joan waited in the waiting room waiting for her name to be called while fanning herself with her right hand whilst she rested her left on her bloated stomach. “Ormsby,” the nurse called whilst holding the door and searching for a standing woman. Joan was guided to the room she waited for Dr. Green to pop into the room smiling like he always did at the other appointments. Joan looked around the room many thoughts

This Friday, September 15th, I had my clinical observation experience in the ED. I was there from 7:00 am till noon, viewing the flow and duties of the nursing staff on the unit, as well as practicing the skills I have thus learned in school. Throughout most of the morning, I followed Jessica, who had been a nurse in the ER for ten years. It was an insightful experience that broadened my previously limited knowledge of the roles and experience of an emergency nurse.

The smell of antiseptic filled my nostril as I gripped my coffee tightly. Swinging my bag over my shoulders, I watched as the other nurses and doctors walked into rooms checking on patients. The sound of familiar beeping rang through the air, as I strolled past the front desk into the hospital break room. I opened the doors and heard the voice of my coworker.