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My Nursing Career: A Whole New AppreciationMary Ellen Buechel Holbrook, RN, BA, TNCC Not a day goes by, without reading in the newspaper and hearing over the radio or TV about the rising rate of unemployment in our country. It is this reality that has given me a whole new appreciation for being a nurse. Now, becoming a nurse was actually not my life long aspiration. In fact, when I attended Florida State University, back in seventy’s, all I wanted to do was attend college indefinitely and enjoy my life as a confirmed bachelorette. I was carrying a major in Psychology and Physical Education, with a minor in Art History and Biology. I was happy as a clam, not a care in the world. Then, rather insidiously, the unthinkable happened! I fell in love. We became engaged a few months later and my life took a dramatic turn. My fiancée was graduating a month after our wedding, and already had a job waiting for him in Atlanta, Georgia. I scurried off to my counselor one day, who sifted through all my courses. By taking one correspondence class, I would graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Psychology. After getting married and moving to Atlanta, I thought long and hard about what I really wanted to do for my life time career. My initial dream of becoming a Physical Education teacher had already dimmed, and I decided that Bachelor degree graduates in Psychology were a “dime a dozen”. Then it came to me; I probably could do more good as a nurse. I applied to Georgia State University and started in the Nursing degree program in 1976. While in nursing school, I worked at Northside Hospital, first as an EKG technician, then as a nurse’s aide on a medical primary care floor. When I graduated in 1978, there was actually a waiting list for new grads trying to get a job at Northside. Fortunately, since the nurses had already taught me some of the “nitty gritty” skills like, inserting Foley catheters and nasal gastric tubes, as well as performing trach care and suctioning endotrachial tubes, my head nurse gladly gave me a job. Over night, my title changed from Nurses’ aide to Graduate nurse. My uniform also changed from candy striper red and white, to an all white dress, white stockings, white shoes, and that way-too–big for my head, white cap with blue stripe. I had barely finished a three month orientation program, when my husband was notified he was being transferred to Fort Lauderdale. I remember feelings of guilt mixed with panic when I learned of our impending move. How could I possibly tell my head nurse, after such a wonderful orientation, that I was leaving? Obviously, she was very disappointed and didn’t spare any words in telling me so. I wallowed in my guilt a few more days until the realization sunk in. We were moving to sunny Fort Lauderdale! Though I was but a “green horn” of a nurse, I applied at North Ridge Hospital and was hired immediately. I spent my first year working on a predominately cardiac/pulmonary floor. I then moved on to the Intermediate ICU, and soon after, starting floating to “The Unit” (as it was reverently called). This was actually both an ICU and CCU in the same long room separted by two nurses’ stations. The ICU was dedicated mainly for patients having heart surgery, and the CCU was for patients in congestive heart failure and status post myocardial infarctions. I eventually made the move along with one other nurse, and soon learned that when other nurses referred to this area as “The Unit”, it was more out of a connotation of fear than reverence. These nurses were the “Top Gun” in their field, and they knew it. They had years of experience and a wealth of knowledge I could only dream of. It was like there was this ladder with just two steps, we were on the bottom step, they were on the top, and there was a mile between the two. Soon after we finished orientation, the other nurse jumped ship, and there I was, feeling like a minnow in a sea of sharks. After about another six months, I began to feel a little more comfortable. One day I was taking care of a patient on his post-op day number one. I had just discontinued his arterial line and swan ganz catheter. I was moving right along at a brisk pace, feeling almost smug. I yanked the pressure tubing from the one liter bag of normal saline and immediately realized my mistake. As the bag of saline spun around and around in a circle, I watched my patient’s face in utter surprise as the saline smacked him in the face like a water hose. After what seemed like an eternity, it was over. There was saline everywhere, we were both soaked, and my ego took a beating. Of course life was not all stressful; I mean this was Fort Lauderdale! We lived two miles from the beach, a half mile from the racquetball courts, five minutes from North Ridge Hospital, and best of all, I worked the 3-11 shift. This meant that I could get up at nine, hit the racquetball courts for two hours every day, then have enough time to either ride my bike down to the beach and back, or run about six miles, with plenty of time to shower and get to work. My husband was not so lucky. As a restaurant manager-in-training; he worked about sixty hours a week. For me, this was heaven, but heaven on earth never seems to last very long. After just two years, my husband received a promotion, and we were heading west to Tampa. I was eight months pregnant, and what struck me as so funny, was that the nurse who seemed to pick me apart the most, was the one who threw my baby shower before we left.
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