One of my greatest fears upon beginning my nursing
career, was that emergency situation and the ‘what to do’ about it. Will I know
what to do? Will I freeze? Will I jump to conclusions and make incorrect
choices?
The myriad pages of textbooks, hundreds of slides
and quite a significant number of professor’s voices seem to curl up in to a
messy ball only to be stored in the attic of my brain matter. The knowledge
continues to exist, but often spends some most of its time collecting dust in
the folds of that brain matter. Kind of like those necessities hiding in our
attics; they seem appropriate for chucking into bins, yet remain lingering
about, collecting dust for most of their lifetime but complete a picture and
save the day when the dust is shaved off and the product becomes the missing
puzzle piece in a dire situation.
Nursing is all about dealing with the unexpected, but
even when my own patient takes a turn for the worse, I am usually aware of the
patient’s medical background, the possible sequence of events that have led up
to that moment and often the probable causes of the acute, unexpected change.
There are also times when I may be faced with emergencies within a public
domain, but the resources are often too limited so interventions are often
narrowed down to the basics of A, B, C; airway, breathing and circulation, as well
as maintaining safety until more help arrives.
However, recently while in a hospital setting, a place
where I’m in a certain mode of knowing the health conditions that have prefaced
the acute or unexpected change, I was faced with an emergency situation within
the walls of the hospital, on my own unit, but to a complete stranger. With only
2 nurses on the unit at that time, there were only 4 hands available to
maintain the safety of the patient found experiencing a 'Clonic-tonic' seizure,
until more help was summoned and arrived at the scene. The 2 minutes it
took until the Emergency Response Team and other healthcare workers to come
help at the scene was one of the longest 2 minutes I've ever experienced. The
speed at which I ran to grab the necessary oxygen equipment, vitals,
medications... surpassed the speed I ran in the gym when attempting to compete
with the fastest treadmill runner nearby. It took only an instant for the dusty
knowledge regarding nursing care for a seizing patient to rinse itself off and
climb out of the storage box and into mine and my colleague's brains. Between
the treasures hiding in both of our brain matters we were able to assemble the
adequate knowledge for our dire situation at hand.
That day I truly felt as though I saved a
life. I also felt a slight sense of gratitude for the information I've been
able to accumulate, store and utilize when the need came around. I am grateful
that my job entails the constant utilization and application of my brain's
knowledge. I not only avoid brain senescence through my continuous exercising
of my brain's web of knowledge, but each day I strengthen the capacities of my
brain by pulling my daily nursing tasks together and accumulating the resources
of knowledge stored there, to be hauled out of my brain matter for times at
which they will help me make life saving decisions.
