Second Observation

For my second observation, I decided to interview a teammate and watch a few episodes of Trauma Life in the E.R.
A recently found out that a girl on my rowing team is already in the nursing program. I sat down and talked to her for a little bit about it because she was already a step ahead. I found out that she is in the dual admissions program so she was basically automatically accepted to the program when she got accepted to Nova. She is a sophomore here and is currently getting all her pre-requisites out of the way. I just wanted to get a feel for why she decided to go with nursing because I am still making up my mind. She went on telling me about how a lot of the women in her family were nurses and they all loved it. She said she admired the way her mom would do her job. She told me when she couldn’t stay home alone her mom would take her to work and she got to see her mom working first hand in the hospital. She said the chemistry between workers and patients was just something she always loved. She said she had respect for all the time and work they put in for the patients and she knew at a young age that she wanted to also be a nurse. I really enjoyed talking to her because I could tell while she was talking to me that she was really sincere and excited to be in the nursing program. It got me motivated to start as soon as possible. She did tell me the down sides but I told her if it gets me to be a nurse, I’ll do it. She reminded me that it was a lot of hard work, like everyone else has told me, and can be very stressful. She said even though her mom was passionate about her job, it still took a toll. Overall I’m glad I got to sit down and talk about her past experiences.
For the second part of my observation, I watched Trauma Life in the E.R. This has always been one of my favorite shows because even though you’re not right there, they show you everything and everything is real life. From serious gunshot wounds to stitches and casts, this show never gets old. There is really never the same story twice and that portrays what it’s really like in the Emergency Room. The action in there sometimes is so unbelievable and so uncalled for; some of the things that I watched, you wouldn’t imagine could ever happen. The first guy that came in was 33% decapitated. This was a freak accident that happened while he was working on his car in his garage. While he was under the hood, something went terribly wrong and the fan somehow broke off and slit his throat while it flew out from the car. I heard what happened and saw the damage I did and my jaw dropped. They nurses and doctors were racing to save this man’s life because with 33% decapitation, not only has he lost an extensive amount of blood, they said it was very possible that he hit major arteries. That much blood loss automatically made them assume that if he survived his injury, he would be brain damaged. They also had to check to make sure that major arteries had not been hit because if they were, there is a change for more blood loss and possibly death. As miracle workers, both doctors and nurses were able to save the man’s life; it was truly incredible to watch.
Another man that came in had a serious gunshot wound to the hip. He came in screaming and you could just see and hear that he was in agonizing pain. Although he came to the hospital for help, whenever the nurses tried to touch him he freaked and didn’t want anything to do with him. When he finally realized that if he didn’t calm down he wouldn’t get help, he let the nurses do their job. They gave him medication to lessen the pain and to see what the exact damage was. When x-rays came back, they determined that the bullet shattered the whole right side of his hip; it was literally in pieces which you could easily see on the T.V. screen. Even though it was a serious case, it was kind of ridiculous when they asked him if he had been shot before he said yes. When they asked him how many times, he replied “twelve”. Even the nurses’ faces were priceless. It’s true in an emergency room; you really never know what you’re going to see until it comes in.