Hospital posting-- journal 1

I have been ambivalent for the past few days since I came back from my first-week posting in Sg. Buloh Hospital.
I knew that it is ridiculous to compare the real-life environment with the embellished, fancy, and, if I can say, glamorous scenes you often see on the show like ER, or Grey’s Anatomy. I also knew that I am being too hypercritical or biased if I compare the nurses in Canada with the nurses here. Somehow, I just couldn’t help but felt disappointed, especially when I witnessed how the staff nurses treated a patient who just returned from the operating room.
Looking at the patient’s face wretched by tears, I was heart-broken. A wave of anger rushed over me. I wanted to stand up for the patient. On the other hand, I was uncommunicative. After all, what kind of power a student nurse has over senior staff nurses? I wanted to release the pain he was suffering. On the other hand, I was stuck in the mud. After all, what kind of skill or knowledge does a three-month student nurse really know?
I decided to talk to the patient. As I opened my mouth, I realized that my tongue, somehow, got stuck in the throat.
There was no word coming out of my mouth.
I had used to think that communication with patients would not be a problem to me as my previous employment has given me an adeptness in handling of customers. That day, I realized that communicating with healthy people and communicating with sick people are two different things.
You just cannot set off the conversation with “the weather is very nice today”, can you? I mean the patient is lying on the bed suffering. He cannot even enjoy every minute, and you are telling him that the weather is nice?
When Ms. Noorlida assigned me to a unit, I was standing there and frozen for quite awhile. I was shock—no matter how well I thought I could handle it, and no matter how well I had prepare procedures prior to the theories and the practice, my mind went off instantly. I didn’t know what to do.
“It is my first time ‘working’ in a hospital. Being panic is understandable,” this was what I told myself afterwards.
Nevertheless, the experience that I gained was marvellous and precious. Although I was upset by the attitudes of the staff nurses, at least I still learned a lot from them. And I finally had a taste of how it is like working in a hospital. Having bad nurses as a reflect, I now know how to be a good nurse. Since I cannot tell them in face, this is what I want to say—if you really hate your job, just quit. Don’t put your sufferings on other people and treat them as your scapegoats. As what Ms. Celine said, what goes around, it comes back around. One day, when other nurses take care of your beloved ones, they will do the same.