Invading Belgium

Job Shadowing - Chapter 2/Chapter 3

Soo, I haven't been on here for ages; so sorry if you were all waiting in dreadful suspense for the next installations of my job shadowing!!

On Thursday when I got to the hospital I went straight to ICU, and I helped serve breakfast, which was well...more waitress than nurse, but it's all part of the job right!? Lol, so anyways, after that I helped one of the other nurses give one of the patients a bath.
She was like 'do you want to help me, just so you can see how we do it when they're sedated?...But don't worry, I'll do...that part' So I helped out with that, then the Charge Nurse, Jaques, thought I hwas bored, so he offered to take me to...*drum roll*...The Operation room! I got to watch them take a superficial vien out of this guy's leg.The doctor doing was really nice and explained everything to me as he went along. I didn't get to see the very end though, because Jaques came looking for me because it was quarter to one, and I hadn't eaten lunch yet. Belgians are NOT big on missing meals, or eating late. Even at work they stop at 10.00 for coffee, just like we have recess at school (yes, still in 'High School')at 10.00.

So anyways, in the after noon I hung out in the ICU for most of the time, I did go to Pediatrics for about a half hour and hung out with Simone, but she had nothing to do, so I went back to the ICU. Jaques was trying all afer noon and all day friday to get me into Maternity to see a birth, but they already had 6 people job shadowing in Maternity, so there quite literally wasn't room for me.

On Friday morning I brought in Peanut Butter cookies that I made Thursday night for the ICU, and a Canada postcard I worte a thank you note on. Most people in Belgium like peanut butter, but its not something that anyone I knows eats, so peanut butter cookies were kind of, a specialty. But they loved them, naturally. And Jaques told me my note almost made him cry, he was joking obviously, but I go to school wit hhis daughter, and she told me that he absolutly loved having me there, and loved the note, and that I did an amazing job! :D

After we ate about half the cookies...Jaques took me to Emergency, and one of the people there was super nice and he took me around and showed and explained everything to me, he even took all the stuff out of one of the ambulances and showed me everything. I hung out there for about 45 minutes, but I literally stood around with nothing to do, because noone came in, noone left, they didn't get any calls for the ambulance, so I was just like 'well...thanks, but I'm going to head back to the ICU...' So, it was good that I got to see everything, but it was kinda boring.

At lunch I ate in the cafeteria with another girl who was doing a job shadowing thing in the ICU too, but she was in her last year of her nursing program at Uni. She was really nice, and all the time I was in the ICU on Friday I hung around with her because she took more time to explain things that she was doing to me.

Friday after noon I did get to see 2 pretty cool things though. The first was that one of the patients had an infection, but they couldn't figure out what, so they took blood from his sternum (the bone in the middle of your chest) to do tests on. It was slightly creepy at to see how much force the doctor was using to push this HUGE needle into his chest though. It was neat though, because none of the nurses in the ICU had ever even seen it been done before.
The second thing was that I got to watch them put a catheder into a patients arm who had just been admitted that day.

It was really sad to leave on Friday, because I LOVED it, but I'm really psyched because now I know for sure that that is what I want to do! I don't know what, like, unit or anything, but I know that I want to work with Doctors Without Borders (http://www.msf.ca). The U of C's nursing website isn't great (and the U of A's is even worse), but I know I have to upgrade my Science and my Math, and that will take at least 5 months after I get back, so I'll have loads of time to go and get panphlets or whatever from the U of C & the U of A, which are really they only 2 univesities I'd want to go to because then I won't have to pay for a dorm.

EEEK.

In other news, I cut all my hair off yesterday! Yepppp...its super short now, see :


I think I like it, I like my bangs...alot, the rest is a bit too short I think, but my hair grows pretty fast, so I don't really care!

Oh, and I went to Carnival on Sunday and Tuesday (Tuesday was...Mardi Gras!!!!), it was SO MUCH FUN. I loved it!! Thankfully Bailey and I left around 10 on Tuesday though, because at abour 11.30 someone was killed. Noone here seemed really shocked about it though, but they have huge outdoor all-weekend concerts here all throughout the summer, and there is usually someone who dies at them, and usually someone gets killed at Carnival every year. Thats one of the big differences between Europe and North America, like, could you imagine if someone was just randomly killed at Stampede? That would be such a huge deal, but everything here just went on like normal. Wierd.

I think thats all for now though! à bien tot!

posted by Lissa @ 12:27 PM