Miriam’s Story on Her Personal Journey

Hey guys, we want to give you an idea of what it’s like when you’re starting your nursing school journey, what the whole process looks like. Just a lot of questions that people have as they start nursing school as if it’s really worth it and all of that. So Kenia has prepared some questions to ask that we’re going to go through and hopefully answer some of your questions. Awesome. All right, well let’s get started. So why and how did you know you wanted to be a nurse? So growing up, I always watched ER over and over and I was probably the only person in my family that was not in education, which is funny cause now I am. But I always knew I wanted to go into something medical and then I saw the movie patch Adams and saw how he really just made the patients happy.

So I wanted to do that. So originally I thought I’ll go into physical therapy. And then along that process, I worked with patients in cardiac rehab and found out that nurses do that job. So I went to nursing school, ended up not doing cardiac rehab or anything with hearts, but that’s what took me through that journey. What did your application process look like? So it’s been a while, but from what I remember it was a big paper application and I had broken my right wrist. So my best friend filled it out for me. I submitted that and then got set up to go take my TEAS test, which is a test that you take to kind of place you and see if you are going to be accepted into the program. And then I also had to have an interview with the Dean of the school just to kind of go through my resume and for them to just kind of meet you and test out your character before being accepted.

What was the hardest part of school? Hmm. So the hardest part of school… nursing school is hard. Understanding the best way to answer questions. I found a group of girls that we studied together all the time and it was really helpful. So I highly recommend that. Find those study groups, use nursing.com. I wish I had had something like that. So really it was just kinda getting into that it’s a different mentality and a different thought process. It was hard but totally worth it.

What is one thing you wish someone had told you about nursing? That it was going to be hard! But worth it. There’s a lot. One thing I will say there is a high burnout. You don’t think when you’re in nursing school, you’re so excited to be on this journey and don’t realize how quickly you can get burned out. So I really recommend people knowing that and then just kind of thinking ahead. I never thought I want to go back to school, but it was very helpful for me just to have other opportunities still within nursing. But just to kind of change it up.

What is one thing you will never forget about your experience in nursing school? The friendships I made. The group of girls I studied with a lot and I think a lot of nurses would say that you get these relationships with nurses where you can just look at each other in the eyes when you’re with a patient and you know what the other person’s thinking. It is just a big bond that forms that and really just some really awesome patients that I’ve taken care of over time and through nursing school that I’ll never forget.

What is the most memorable patient story you can think of? There’s so many. So my very first patient as a new grad was a priest. He was the sweetest patient. He would come back and visit me after he had been released from the hospital, bring treats and always give me big hugs and I’ll never forget him. I think also just being my first patient, but I loved him. Yeah. So sweet.

Do you have any regrets? So, no, and I’ve said that no regrets. Just things that I wish I had known going into it. So hopefully this will help some other students.

What is the worst thing you’ve seen in practice? For example, bleeding deep skin wound. So the worst thing I’ve seen, one time I got this patient that came up, I was a new med search nurse and this is a night shift. He came from the emergency room and he was there for cellulitis. His wife had tried to help by some old wives tales and had wrapped his legs in newspaper and tied ropes on it. Well, it had killed some of the tissue and we had no wound care orders. It’s the middle of the night. So one of the other nurses came in with me and was like, okay, we’re going to figure this out. He smelled horrible because he had been stuck on the ground and he’d been soiling himself. So put the good old coffee grounds in the room to help it smell better. Got him cleaned up and I went to lift his foot up to do some wound care and his heel, uh, came off like just flap down the skin. That night when I came or the next night when I came back, he had had an amputee of that lower leg because of it. But that was probably the most unexpected, craziest thing that I saw. Man, that is goodness.

How do you balance work and life? So this is really important, I think for also for burnout for a nursing student or as you become a new grad nurse, you know, they, they need more nurses. We need nurses, so they’re like, Hey, come work extra. We’ll pay extra and all that extra money. Sounds good. But you can get burned out. So learning to say no and just finding that balance. I make sure I spend time with my kids and my husband and my family and I don’t take on extra because the burnout is, it’s a tough one, I feel for me, once I start to get burned out, it’s hard for me to come back from it. Like it takes some time.

All right guys, thanks for joining us. And I hope you learned something. Happy nursing. Happy nursing.