My headnurse and I sat down for the discussion of my 6th month exam. She voiced out how disappointed she were about the turnout of the said exam. I felt like I was a butter melting under the sun as she tackled each of the item in my revalida. Honestly, I was and still am ashamed that I have not grasped the concept of cardiac medicines and the procedure and diagnostics related to cardiac diseases.
I know that I still have so much to learn and I am willing to engage in a serious one-on-one lecture in order for me to learn more. I am serious about my profession and I shall do anything to keep me knowledgeable anything that has to do about the human heart.
I owe to myself and to the institution.

I thought it will all end in the submission of incident report regarding the medication error until I got a text from my headnurse. There was a scheduled meeting with the medication error committee. I did not know that there was such a committee and it seems that they would not let us off the hook although there was nothing serious happened to the patient.
We were from the PM shift and we were prioritized among the 9 offenders.
It was the second to be roasted. As expected, it did not go well. We were judged before we could defend ourselves. We were asked to make a correlation between the withholding of Plavix and the left side body weakness of the patient.
It is due to be submitted on Monday.
And yes, we still have to await the sanction for the error that we committed.
Although I did not take full responsibility for the offense, I did not bailout on anyone.

My headnurse has tasked me and my colleague to come up with a presentation about the Coronary Artery Disease. She knows that we already have basic knowledge about it and she wants us to have thorough knowledge about it.
She requires a comprehensive discussion about it and we need to present it in our next unit meeting.
We sure can come up with what is expected of us. The problem is we do not have common day off to discuss what we are going to write.
She is giving us a run for our money and we need to work our rears off to meet her expectations
I will be posting here what we have come up soon.

I am glad that my preceptor showed up last night for our duty. Although she has not been of help that much because she has some patients that required monitoring, having her around made me feel confident that I won’t slip. She let me do the endorsement to the incoming shift on my own. I do not know if the incoming charge nurse was just nice but he did not roast me. I browsed through my to-do list and I thought that I was able to fulfil my tasks.
I was able to finish the endorsement on time including the completion of my logbooks. I had to wait for them to finish their endorsement to the incoming bedside nurse and their charting.
We were able to punch out before 9:00 am and I asked them to go the Sunday bazaar at the Lung Center of the Philippines to check for the rvs for sale We had our brunch there under a make shift tent in the heat of the sun. It was a good shift and we had a good time to cap it off.

After three days of getting away from the hospital, I am again scheduled to report for work, as a charge nurse. Excitement and nervousness are now setting in. I have not recovered yet from the mistake that I have committed in my last duty. Actually, the order was not made in my shift but being the PM shift, it was my job to make sure that the orders in the past 24 hours have been carried out accordingly which I failed to do considering that I have done my 24-hour check already.
The mistake was not fatal but still it is a failure on my part. Lesson learned.

What I enjoy most about my new career is that we could request for day or days off. So long as you can complete the required work hours for a certain cut off, your request could be granted.
I have three days off from my night shift and I will be back on Saturday for the night shift again. After that my request for four days off will follow.
If there is bad side to having a granted long off request that is you’ll be given with a not so good shift after.
Well, you can’t have everything. Better that nothing.

It’s my second day of being a charge nurse, first at night shift. Tasks are more demanding as doing the 24-hour check of the chart making sure that all the doctors’ orders were carried out, medications on the Kardex and the medication sheet are updated, line dues have been changed, diet and attending lists and so much more!
Good thing my preceptor’s schedule was still structured with mine and there’s another senior staff who’s willing to guide me.
There were no attendings who made their rounds when my shift started so I was able to start with my 24-hour check at 10:00 pm. Before the stroke of midnight, the phone rang, on the guy on the other line asked for a roll call of patient, I hesitated because he sounded like the supervisor on duty but yet he introduced himself as the guy from the admitting group asking for a roll call. I started to read patient’s names and as I was about to read the third patient, he passed the phone to someone else whom I recognized the voice as my preceptor when I was still an orientee. I immediately burst their bubble. They were having a shot session at a colleagues house and they have decided to play prank call on me.
They almost got me there!

Today is the last day of our favourite Micronesian patient who has undergone coronary artery bypass graft. Luckily, it is our unit meeting so the staff members were almost complete so when they requested for a group picture, it was almost hard to squeeze in everyone in the camera phone. But just before the picture was taken, the patient’s wife has asked for a minute to say something that sent chills to our spines. She and her husband were so thankful for making our institution their second home. She almost broke down into tears saying how they appreciated what we have done for them. I almost cried myself when I saw his husband, a tall man with a body of a wrestler, wiping his tears. The man rarely speaks English and his wife usually communicates with us for him. She even added that the staff members in our institution are like loose diamonds which are hard to find.

A day after my birthday, I am still required to go to the hospital for our unit meeting. To avoid being penalized, I came in early and when I arrived I was told that a patient gave me a cake as a birthday present. I was trying to dish out the idea until I opened up that box and saw this:

That patient was the one who underwent Bentall procedure for his triple A and will be discharged today. I hurriedly went to this room to thank him. He barely recognized me because I was not in my uniform and I was wearing eyeglasses. After a few seconds of recalling who I was, he told me: You’re the one with the sad eye.. The one who almost cried with me when I was at te lowet part of my life.
Seriously, I cannot remember being emotional when I was his bedside nurse although I was told during the tran-in admission from the surgical ICU that he has had episodes of depressions there reaching the point of being combative.
I am glad that he’s okay and I also found out that he lives a few blocks from home.

I was pretty pleased today because I was able to finish my endorsement on the dot!
I was just on 8-hour shift which was 7 am to 3 pm and I was not able to enjoy my off yesterday coming from a graveyard shift. Then again, I was overjoyed. I had the most suave shift. I was able to close my charts at 2 pm and finish my equipment inventory at 2:30 pm. The incoming bedside nurse was early and asked me to do the endorsement right away and so I did.
This is just a good day for me.