My first specialty rotation after my second attempt at med/surg.
Just my luck, more med/surg but for little humans. At first I didn't know how to take it. Should I be happy that I have pediatrics right after med/surg being that the concepts are pretty much the same? or Did I want a break from all the med/surg crap? Well at this point I didn't have a choice. Pediatrics it was.
I'm not going to lie, it was hard. No room for procrastinating since it was only a 7 weeks rotation with 5 exams. It all started well, I passed my first, second, and third test without any issues. Again, lots of studying was involved. I had little anxiety and I was testing well. The material was easy to understand and I was actually interested in it. Then the cardiac section came along and although I loved it all I felt like I was back in med/surg the first time around. I couldn't get it all down packed and my anxiety started to creep back in. Let's just say it wasn't my best test out of the 5, but I had done well enough in the others that it really didn't affect me much. With one test to go I was having a little anxiety but it was all good in the end. As soon as the rotation finished we headed to celebrate. We were officially half way through the nursing program.
To be quite honest Peds isn't my thing. You need to have a calling for it and lots of patience, something that I lack even with being a mother. Don't get me wrong, the children were adorable and baths and changing diapers is a lot easier on little humans but giving meds to a toddler was not fun at all! Just imagine having to give meds to your toddler? Now imagine having to give meds to someone else's toddler? Big difference right. Yup, my point exactly. I rather give meds to an adult any day :) Whatever little patience I have went out the window the first minutes. Aside from that however, interacting with them was so much fun.
On another note, the very tiny humans were so much better to work with. I totally dig the NICU. I don't know exactly what it is about super tiny humans but I loved my experience in the NICU and I was lucky enough to have had an infant almost every day in clinical. It was definitively intimidating at first but I think that was more due to my lack of knowledge on their health issues and how to go about properly caring for them.
I didn't care much about the office setting neither. I didn't feel like I was really helping anyone. It involved a lot of parent teaching and gathering information for the provider. Kidspeace, a behavioral health inpatient setting was not my cup of tea either. It was sad learning about their family/medical history and to try and help them was very challenging. Is not my calling. Home health care was interesting, maybe it's something I can do after several years of experience in a hospital setting and with the proper training but at this moment is not something I want to do right after graduating. My calling is with the newborn and the premature babies which goes hand in hand with my love for Obstetrics but that's a topic for another post.
On to my second specialty rotation :)