The last three days I spent most of my time in transit, going back and forth from UST Hospital, for my Intravenous Therapy (IVT) completion duty, to San Pedro, Laguna, where I live. It was pretty tiring, I can tell you that much. Don’t believe me? Well I’ll let these newly formed zits on my face prove it to you.
Anyway these three days have been incredibly jarring, as once again I’ve been exposed to a multitude of people, all with different ways of thinking and different ways of doing things.
You see the whole point of me spending eight hours per day for three days in the hospital was to get cases so I can get my IVT license. I needed to insert a total of six IV lines, administer six medications through the IV line and administer two units of blood components to the patients. Now I didn’t really have much trouble with the medication administrations, as those are fairly easy to come by in the hospital. And the two blood transfusions I still have yet to get, as those are pretty rare and hard to come by.
As for the insertion cases I have all six of them, but I’ve only done three out of the six. What’s the problem, you ask? Well my qualm is that now, I feel like I haven’t learned everything I could from the experience. And I don’t think this is my fault; I was assertive for those three days, standing up and preparing the materials as soon I as hear the words ‘insertion’ in the area.
I’ve learned that there’re two kinds of teachers in this world: the one you would hate because you’re made to do everything mostly by yourself, and the one who does everything for you. It’s the second type that I mostly encountered in the hospital, in the form of the staff nurses preceptors.
One staff nurse, I knew, meant well and did the insertions herself and still let me have the case because she was genuinely nice. And then there’s the other staff nurse who seemed to think I was an added burden to her and deemed me too slow so she did the insertions herself. Now I know the first one meant well and all while the second one was just being a bitch; she seemed to have forgotten what it was like to be new at something because she’s been doing the insertions for so long.
No matter whether the teacher meant well or not, by doing everything for the student you deliberately let them miss the opportunity to learn whatever it is they’re supposed to learn. And I resent not being able to learn, because how can I have confidence in what I’m doing if I didn’t get enough practice? Urg. Now I realize that I’d much rather have a teacher who I hate for giving me too much to do than somebody who’s done all the work for me.
I plan to get more cases when I get another schedule for the blood transfusion cases, and for those three more insertion cases, I’ll be sure to do it myself.
