If you have ever taken the time to read the “About Me” section of my blog, I briefly speak about me always being known as “the shy girl”. I stated in part,
“We are looked at as the underdogs and often overshadowed, but when we speak up, our names hold weight & in all actuality we are the heartbeat of healthcare! All my life I have been the shy girl. Never have been one to truly speak my mind or give my opinion, but nursing changed that for me. Nursing has allowed me to realize, oh fuck I do have a voice and it matters! More importantly not only do I have a voice, but I have valuable things to say and worth spreading with the world.”. I then went further to state “See, being a nurse inadvertently made me a bad ass”.
When I was in nursing school, I always kept to myself and was noticeably quiet, but have always been an extremely intelligent person, blooming with such an innovating spirit. I did well in my classes, but I’ll never forget the unconfident girl that presented herself in lab and clinicals. This was partially me being naturally introverted but mainly the lack of trust I had in myself and in my knowledge. It wasn’t till I met a specific lab instructor, that all that changed for me. She literally spoke so much life into me, she was one of the very few people in my life who addressed my shyness and lack of confidence in myself so straightforwardly. One day after lab she pulled me aside and told me, “It’s done already, trust yourself and believe that God has already made you a nurse”. She went on to explain to me how important it was for me to walk in all my greatness, share what I know, be confident in what I know and in who I am, and to speak my mind always in and outside of nursing.
No one in this world will ever know what you are capable of unless you speak the fuck up! Being quiet as a nurse is not a thing. I love the saying “own you, before they do”. People are always going to make judgements of you, but give them something to positive to say. I can’t lie and say I’ve totally grown out of my quietness, but what I can say is that I know I’m a damn good nurse and when it comes to my patients I have a lot to say. Furthermore, let your performance speak for you. I love the small children’s hospital I am currently at because we run our own codes. We’re a tiny hospital so we don’t have ICU when the ship sinks. We run that shit! This has helped me grow so much, I cannot tell you the number of times I had to partake in a code, but those difficult moments are what shapes you into a bomb ass nurse. Your instincts kick in, there is no room to be quiet and shy, you speak the fuck up, jump in, and show everything you know!
I work with very critical children, 90% of the kids I work with are trach and ventilator dependent. When they have a change in condition they can drop quickly! I can remember a time where I was giving report to the oncoming nurse and as we were in the room the baby’s condition literally changed right before our eyes, he went from plush pink and playing to dusky blue and crying in a matter of seconds. At this time, it just so happen that the resident was at bedside as well and immediately panicked and was considering calling a code blue. I don’t know what took over me but there was no “shy girl” in sight, I quickly shouted NO! I know what you’re probably thinking why in the hell wouldn’t I want to call a code and this baby is blue af! But again, this was one of those moments where you have to speak up! Knowing your patients is essential, but also knowing the type of population you work with and how to deal with it is important too. Again, most of the kids I work with are trach/vent dependent and in that we are trained in how to care for such patients. Keeping in mind, some of these kids are in a comatose state, but some are not. Some are still playing and rolling in bed with a trach in their neck, connected to a ventilator with no care in the world (seriously lol). I say that, because it’s no surprise that some of our kids will disconnect themselves from the ventilator (yeah, the machine that they are depending on to breath!) In that, we are not going to call a code every time they become disconnected, it’s a given that if they are on a vent and if it pops off they might turn a little blue! So I said, before we hit the panic button, lets at least assess this patient and attempt some interventions. At this time the patient was actually still connected to the vent, but it was clear he wasn’t getting sufficient oxygenation, so that told me one or two things : the ventilator is either disconnected at another port other than on the patient side or this patient is having an exacerbation of some sort, OR it could simply be because he’s crying, thus holding his breath and blocking his airway. Either way, vents have settings that allows a specific amount of oxygen to be delivered and in this case he wasn’t getting 100% oxygen from the vent, so to give him that 100% oxygen I popped him off the vent and gave him manual breaths using an ambu bag and consoled him to get him to stop crying. The patient sure enough came back up, stopped crying and was a nice pink color that we all want to see. In this timeframe we got respiratory in the room, who noticed that the tubing had still been connected to the patient but the tubing disconnected from the vent, AKA the baby wasn’t on the vent! Once we got tubing together, we were able to safely place the baby back on the vent and he was perfectly fine.
In writing this probably sounds like a fucking code lmao! Trust me when I say, IT WAS NOT. This lasted all but a minute if that honestly, my point was to drive home using your clinical knowledge and simply speaking up. Come to find out, this was a newer resident, whom which was on her first pediatric rotation. She thanked me for being so calm and just taking simple measures to fix the problem. But this is why I say know the population you work in, because working with kids they move nonstop, and this literally happens all the time. For sure take precautions because it could have led to a real code situation, but that’s where you must use your clinical judgment and do and say what you think is best. AND this is what I mean when I said nursing made me a bad ass and I stand firm in when I stated “We are looked at as the underdogs and often overshadowed, but when we speak up, our names hold weight & in all actuality we are the heartbeat of healthcare!”. This is by no means to discredit the resident I worked with that day, because I work for a teaching hospital. We’re all learning, literally! But when you trust your God given instincts and release that bomb ass nurse inside of you, that shy girl, unconfident girl, or whatever you classified yourself as before, all that shit disappears and you make so many remarkable contributions to your workforce! I know everything wont happen overnight, but if you truly are a shy girl like me or just struggling with your transition into the nursing world, just make sure you add bomb right next to that label, believe in yourself, step out of your comfort zone and speak up!