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September 07, 2004
I know that I don't know, but....
I still don't know. Don't you hate that?
I think that has been the single most frustrating thing about diving into this nursing world. It is completely new. I had no idea how to do anything before two months ago. Yes, I have all sorts of skills and knowledge and experience that I can apply to this experience, but there are so many nuances, so many things that I am aware that I do not know just that sit there in front of my face, taunting me.
It is a huge lesson in patience with my own abilities at a given moment, with my learning process, in the power of wisdom gained through experience, and in just taking a deep breath and plowing forward and making the best decisions I can with my current knowledge, but dammit, it can be frustrating as a mother!
And it's funny, because of course in any given situation there are things that you don't know how to do yet, experiences you haven't had that will provide you with a different perspective in the next phase of your life, but this is different. It's so concrete. It's so palpable you can almost chew on it. Whether it's just fundamentally knowing a skill like giving an injection, understanding what to say to a patient (or what not to say) and how to say it, proficiency at other skills you have learned so you can do them in such a way that they cause less discomfort to the person that you are working with... or whether it's the bigger stuff, like confronting issues of mortality and grief, comfort and suffering, the infrastructure of the hospital environment and even politics within the nursing staff... it's all just RIGHT THERE. There are people surrounding you that have been through it, and are at another level. You watch them work. You watch them know. And you hope that you will one day be able to do that.
I hope I will.
And I hope I can appreciate this precarious time, because it is so important, and there is so much I can gain from my awareness of being in it.
But fuckall - sometimes I just want to be able to cram it all in this tiny brain of mine and do it NOW. In the words of Veruca Salt of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory... "But Daddy, I want the goose that lays the golden egg!"
Ok, that doesn't really apply, but it's the only thing I could think of.
Posted by missfitsandstarts at September 7, 2004 02:14 AM
Comments
Hang in there! We've all been through it. I still have those moments of running face-first into the learning curve. Fortunately those moments are spread wider and wider apart amongst a lot more moments of confidence - I think learning is more exciting now when that I've got the confidence in between the stumbling blocks. But hang in there. You'll get there!
Posted by: Mia at September 22, 2004 10:40 AM
