Few have probably wondered who represents the various segments of the nursing workforce. Within the scope of this article, we will focus our attention on one of the largest parts of people working in the field—young students—and I will try to approximately present to you that one 24-hour shift, which has already become a common occurrence for many nurses.
While studying at the university, the opinion is voiced quite often and actively that a representative of the medical field should possess nursing skills. This is a very correct view shared by almost all doctors. For them, as well as for today’s students, contact with the practical medical field mostly began precisely with shifts as interns and nursing in clinics. Against the background of the acute shortage of nurses in the country, it is especially easy for students to start working as nurses; after a few weeks of practice and shifts, they are inevitably offered a job, because if you are already going to the clinic and staying up all night, “isn’t it better to get a salary for it?”
For a student who has already been working as a nurse for several months, combining daily life, studies, and work is certainly not easy. And a shift day is not actually 24 hours.
As a rule, the workday starts at 9 AM. But to reach the clinic and overcome the rhythm of the congested city, one hour is always to be accounted for. This also requires skill; therefore, with the alarm set from 6 AM, you probably manage to lift your head by seven, re-evaluate your life choices, and prepare for a often forcedly long day and night—getting ready, dressing, having breakfast (if you make it), and heading toward the clinic. Only after these rituals can we say that the workday has already begun.
Immediately upon arriving at the clinic and reporting to the post, the first thing you do is take over from the previous shift, listen to the report about the condition of old and new patients in the department, and get acquainted with the work plan. You have to constantly monitor them and help meet various needs, which, believe me, is physically demanding work—especially when there are only two nurses in the department while the number of patients sometimes exceeds fifteen.
The day goes by very slowly, and yet you constantly have to do work: vital signs of patients must be entered into the program, everyone must be given the appropriate medication as prescribed, and according to the doctor’s request, you or your partner must take this or that patient to various examinations; consequently, the entire department is left for one person to look after.
You must be well-versed in the art of dealing with medications—their dilutions, side effects, the correct nuances of administration—otherwise, it complicates the task greatly and makes you lose a large amount of time, which further increases the volume of the overwhelming workload.
And just when you think you’ve been given a bit of time to rest, your peace will surely be disturbed by some superior who has an allergy to a nurse sitting idle and will definitely find some task for you—be it hauling medications from the warehouse or cleaning beds and windowsills, which is the orderlies’ job, but they aren’t many in the clinic either and they aren’t sitting idle either. Soon, against the background of the sound of an ambulance, a new patient is brought into the department, whose reception, tidying up, putting on monitors, taking blood for analysis, running this analysis to the laboratory, and running back for the answer is also your job. This is in the best-case scenario, but if the patient is unstable, everything changes.
During the admission of an unstable patient, the nurse is the main actor in the department; you must perform the actions listed above three times faster, you must suddenly be able to prepare the appropriate medication, administer it, prepare a sterile table for the necessary procedure, and assist the doctor. During this time, you stand on your feet and run various medications and equipment until the patient stabilizes, and monitoring a stable patient is solely your job. You must be able to determine how the patient’s condition has changed and tell the doctor about it in the correct form, because often every suspicious word expressed subjectively to doctors is heard with strain.
Today you had lectures at the university, but you missed them. It is true that professors and teachers do not like it when a student works shifts—one day they miss a seminar, and the next day they come after a shift and, being exhausted, have no energy to listen to anything. But it’s okay, such is the job; after all, you want pocket money, don’t you? It hasn’t been credited to you for three months. During the shift, you often talk to your partner about future plans, studies, work matters, and about that salary from 3 months ago that should be deposited any day now. That month was especially difficult—instead of the standard eight, you ended up with 12 shifts because you were covering for someone, someone got sick, or someone went on vacation, so I think you should have gotten a bit more. In this thought, you also remember that you haven’t eaten all day and you share the idea of planning a meal with your partner, with whom you discuss ideas for some ready-made store food, “Anakom” soup, a bakery “Lobiani,” or simply ideas of a heavy fast and mercy, and finally, having settled on some option, either you go yourself or you entrust the shopping to some colleague. But by a twist of fate, sometimes you still don’t manage to eat until late in the evening, because this is a common occurrence—either a new patient comes in or someone in the department becomes critical.
Throughout the entire day, you have to do the same heavy routine, endure insults often from dissatisfied patients, get tensed by a thousand remarks, and think about that university quiz you have tomorrow and didn’t manage to study for. At the same time, you are angry that this 3-month-old salary is not being credited. After all, you are buying a gift for a group mate’s birthday as a group, and you haven’t contributed money and you feel awkward. Speaking of other financial obligations is superfluous. Thus comes 12 o’clock at night, and you send your partner to sleep so that you can take your turn in four hours—though you are so tired—and thus you spend the night hours awake until several patients are brought in at once, some of whom often realize at two in the morning, against the background of acute abdominal pain all day, that the pain will not go away by itself. And this time you have to fend off a thousand tasks and obligations alone, because you don’t want to take those 4 hours away from your partner.
After the situation is somewhat settled, your time to sleep also comes, but as much as you want to sleep, you find it difficult to fall asleep. Even in those golden hours, if you doze off a little, you should be grateful—especially when someone doesn’t wake you up just after you fall asleep, saying, “stop sleeping, help us.” Yet you were entitled to another half hour of sleep. Thus you grapple with the morning rounds and the last flow of patients, who for some reason enter the department a few minutes before the end of the shift and are yours to look after.
Exhausted and battle-worn, you have to change one bus and two metro lines in the morning to spend half the day again in the university fighting heavy bags under your eyes, and on the way, an ironic message arrives from the bank: “Deposit 420.69 GEL.”
P.S. The amount credited for those twelve shifts was even more absurdly small than this back then, so I chose this symbolic number again. This is my second-year story; which one is yours?
