Nurse Ball, Pediatric RN

As many of you are aware, when it comes to nursing I love to work with kids. Since I've been in Sudbury, I've been able to find work on the pediatric unit at the general hospital. It's not nearly as "glamorous" as what I'd been doing in Vancouver but it's been very good for keeping my skills en pointe.

The unit it small (only 12 beds), but what makes this floor a healthy challenge is that I no longer care for children of a certain diagnosis (neurology/neurosurgery and general surgery) - this ward takes all sorts! Oncology patients, respiratory care, general medical (think: my kid has a high fever and has been extra sick for days). In fact, I seem to rarely see children coming from the OR! So I'm quickly expanding my breadth of knowledge. The other big leap for me is the (re) introduction of the responsibilty of inserting my own IV's! Previously, with BCCH being so big there was a happy little team of nurses who did all of the IV's for us. But now I'm plopped into a place where not only am I responsible for IV's on my floor, but occasionally Peds nurses get called to ER to insert IV's into children there!

<<insert panic here>>

But I am dead set on getting this one skill under my belt. A few weeks ago, a colleague let me do THIS:

that's a bonified IV, people!

And last week, a nice teenage boy (a regular on the unit) let me try my first attempt on him - a real live patient! Even better - I got the vein on the first try!

Yeah Life!

So despite some of my misgivings about the management of the ward and the tight financial belt (they don't provide baby wipes OR pens...how can they not provide us pens, when they help us do, like 80% of my job!?), I find myself quite happy to go to work. I'm learning so so so much every shift. I keep imaginging "One day, when I go back to Children's, I'm going to dazzle them with all of my learn-ed-ness! Plus I can do their IV!" Who knows if I'll get back there, but for now it's nice to think that this transition to a less-equipped, smaller ward has left me a more experienced, prepared nurse.

The happy in my day: On the right, you can see where I labelled my pen "BALL.S." I left it alone at the desk and when I came back someone had also labelled it "sac" "jewels" and "nuts." I felt like part of the team!!