This week I had my new job orientation. I will be working as a Student Nurse Extern (SNE: pronounced snee) at University Hospital. It's like a glorified tech with more privileges and I'm pretty excited about it. So, this week I had job training from 8-4:30 for four days with other nursing students. These included students from the traditional program at IU, Purdue, Anderson, Ivy Tech, etc.
I had become accustomed to the students in my program: my classmates whom I love. They're smart and serious students with varied interests and I had projected our diversity onto the rest of the nursing students. This week, I realized that that wasn't quite the case.
Obviously, I get offended when people try to stereotype nurses, but some of the students that I met this week really represented that stereotype. It's true, they're extremely kind and sweet people who will be good, caring, empathetic nurses. But, I felt that they were missing that something extra. For example:
--We were learning about restraints, when to use them, how to document, etc. When our teacher pulled out the tiny infant and pediatric restraints, an "Awwwwww" filled the room, followed by, "They're so cute!" Seriously? Devices used to hold babies down so they can't move their arms? Cute? Pediatric tracheotomies got the same reaction. Nothing says adorable like a kid who has to breath through a hole in their throat.
--The woman who was sitting next to me saw a spider about the size of a nickel during lecture and she was finished after that. She was antsy, couldn't pay attention, and looked all around the room in a nervous manner for the next 45 minutes. When that portion of the lecture was over, she announced to the class that she had seen a spider, which was subsequently followed by a series of shrieks and nursing students picking up their feet, looking around nervously. A whole room of this. One student shouted out: "I am HIGHLY arachnophobic. I mean, highly. Can we not talk about it? Seriously. Highly." She continued to discuss her fears and her blood pressure elevation upon seeing spiders until class started again. Ten minutes later.
--The last day of class, we were doing computer training for the hospital system. We had had about an hour of class and the teacher told us that she had something special for us. A "funny," she called it. So, she puts a video on the screen that says, "A Friday coming home from work" and shows a penguin flapping around excitedly. At the end, it says, "A Monday going to work" and shows a polar bear crawling very slowly on the ice. The class was hysterical. A video with penguins and polar bears? Hm.
--The last thing that made me miss my cohort in my nursing program was the descriptions that people gave when introducing themselves. Everyone went around the class and they were supposed to say something unique about themselves. Every person, EVERY person, talked only about their husband and children. "My name is... I've been married for four years and I have a 3 year old." Everything in their life was based on this fact and any unique traits that didn't involved their family were purely secondary. Yowza.
I am very excited to be a nurse, but I had forgotten that my class isn't the norm. I guess that nursing stereotype isn't too far off sometimes...
I had become accustomed to the students in my program: my classmates whom I love. They're smart and serious students with varied interests and I had projected our diversity onto the rest of the nursing students. This week, I realized that that wasn't quite the case.
Obviously, I get offended when people try to stereotype nurses, but some of the students that I met this week really represented that stereotype. It's true, they're extremely kind and sweet people who will be good, caring, empathetic nurses. But, I felt that they were missing that something extra. For example:
--We were learning about restraints, when to use them, how to document, etc. When our teacher pulled out the tiny infant and pediatric restraints, an "Awwwwww" filled the room, followed by, "They're so cute!" Seriously? Devices used to hold babies down so they can't move their arms? Cute? Pediatric tracheotomies got the same reaction. Nothing says adorable like a kid who has to breath through a hole in their throat.
--The woman who was sitting next to me saw a spider about the size of a nickel during lecture and she was finished after that. She was antsy, couldn't pay attention, and looked all around the room in a nervous manner for the next 45 minutes. When that portion of the lecture was over, she announced to the class that she had seen a spider, which was subsequently followed by a series of shrieks and nursing students picking up their feet, looking around nervously. A whole room of this. One student shouted out: "I am HIGHLY arachnophobic. I mean, highly. Can we not talk about it? Seriously. Highly." She continued to discuss her fears and her blood pressure elevation upon seeing spiders until class started again. Ten minutes later.
--The last day of class, we were doing computer training for the hospital system. We had had about an hour of class and the teacher told us that she had something special for us. A "funny," she called it. So, she puts a video on the screen that says, "A Friday coming home from work" and shows a penguin flapping around excitedly. At the end, it says, "A Monday going to work" and shows a polar bear crawling very slowly on the ice. The class was hysterical. A video with penguins and polar bears? Hm.
--The last thing that made me miss my cohort in my nursing program was the descriptions that people gave when introducing themselves. Everyone went around the class and they were supposed to say something unique about themselves. Every person, EVERY person, talked only about their husband and children. "My name is... I've been married for four years and I have a 3 year old." Everything in their life was based on this fact and any unique traits that didn't involved their family were purely secondary. Yowza.
I am very excited to be a nurse, but I had forgotten that my class isn't the norm. I guess that nursing stereotype isn't too far off sometimes...
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