I decided to shadow a woman named Maureen McLaughlin who is a registered nurse at Milton Hospital. When I went to visit her, I followed her around the hospital and she showed me what she does as a nurse there. While observing her, I saw her check patients vitals on a chart and she was taking people’s blood pressure. She also made sure that they were taking all of their medications. I mostly just watched her while she did everything, as I was not allowed to administer any medication or look at any of the patient’s charts. A lot of people who were there were extremely sick, and some of the people she was taking care of had just had surgery for a number of different things. When talking to her about what she had to do to become a registered nurse, she told me she had to take classes in biology and anatomy, as nurses have to be very well educated in the field of the human body. She also had to do clinical hours when she was in school to become a nurse, practicing taking people’s blood pressure, giving them shots, and taking blood from them for tests. She said the training in her field was extremely helpful, as she would not have been able to do the things she does without it. The training made sure she knew exactly how to insert a needle, as well as how to do it without causing the patient any type of pain.
My experience was a lot different than I expected. I never thought that I would actually want to be the one taking people’s blood or giving shots but seeing her do some of those things made me wish that I was doing it. I really liked the setting because all of Maureen’s coworkers were extremely nice. If I was unsure of what something was, they gave me the answer in depth. They were more than happy to make sure that I completely understood something that they were discussing. I also learned that it takes a lot of people to do what they do. If one nurse needed to be somewhere else but a patient was in need of something, the other nurses were there to help. They were constantly making sure that every patient was taken care of, whether it was their own or not.
I would like to learn more about becoming a registered nurse. It seems to be an interesting field that has a lot of responsibilities in caring for patients. If I could do this shadowing/volunteer work differently, I would probably ask more questions about the field. I did ask a lot of questions but there are also so many things I am still so curious about. If this was a career that I wanted to pursue in the future, I would already have the skill of talking to people. I am very good at communicating with people and that is something that is important in the field of being a nurse. You have to be able to cheer people up and be extremely polite. You also have to know how to deliver news in a nice way. But in order to do this job, I would also have to go through a lot more schooling. I would need to train in how to insert needles into people. I would also have to get over the fear of possible hurting people, which is an extreme fear of mine. But overall, this experience was a wonderful thing that I wish I could do again.
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Taking Care of YOU 