Nursing News!

Ayeeee I’m way behind, I have so much I want to share!

First I want to tell you about my week last week working with Dra. Valle! It was a lot of fun. Oops and by last week, I mean 2 weeks ago (July 29-Aug 1)…I’m more behind than I thought 😉 It was a special week because there was an American team that came to work with NRN (they have teams all the time, but this one wanted to work in the schools with us). We had special programs that we put on for ALL the students in all 4 schools. In the mornings, we had the kiddos from pre-school until 6th grade, split into 2 groups. For these niños, the program was all about nutrition, eating healthy, exposing unhealthy food, and of course doing several fun skits to teach the kids and have some fun. 

When we were on our way to the school on Monday, Courtney (the main person who worked with us all week from the U.S. team) asked what I would be doing for the day, so I responded “Whatever you need me to help with”. Her response: “Ohh perfect! You can be the banana!” And with that, the following occurred: 

Zanahoria y el Banano!

 The doctor did most of the teaching. I really enjoy her. She is very patient and so good with the kids. She spent practically all day on her feet, leading the program, teaching the students, in a bundle of grapes outfit, WITHOUT air conditioning…anddd she’s 7 months pregnant! Whew…I’ve never been pregnant but I can’t imagine it being very comfortable. 

Dra. Valle preachin’ it.

Here is a picture of our ballin’ team 🙂 From L-R is: Dr. Sen, Psy (aka José Luis, the doctor’s husband), me, Dra. Valle, Jamie (a translator from NRN), Anielka (the banana, my friend and also psychologist at 1 of the schools…she’s the one who told Nadia about this opportunity and hooked me up, she’s a part of Chi Alpha), and Patricia (secretary/assistant for Dra. Valle)

Our team of laborers!

In the afternoons, it was a lot more serious because the topics were about physical and sexual abuse. There are a number of students that have been exposed to this type of abuse, so the goal of this program was to educate the students that abuse is NOT OKAY and to give an opportunity for these students to talk with a psychologist, pastor, or sociologist that would help them to deal with what they are going through. Most of the education was done through short videos, but there was also a skit, and at the end a pastor came and talked to the students about the purpose of dating relationships, and what God intends for them to be. He gave an opportunity at the end for students to receive salvation or reconcile with God if they have been away from Him and want to reconnect. I think there were about 20-some students who gave their life to Christ for the 1st time, and 15 or so that wanted to reconcile with God! So praise the Lord for that!

Pastor preaching to the high school students at Josue 1:8 school in los Brasiles

Ohhhhhh and really cool news!! Remember the picture of the 2 girls that I posted a couple weeks ago?? The ones who I talked to about skin color where I learned a really great lesson from them? Ya that one…The girl on the left. Her name is Priscilla. During this week after the sermon, she gave her life to Jesus! She raised her hand when the pastor asked who wanted to receive salvation and went to talk with someone for about 30 minutes. I got to talk with her afterwards and she said this was her 1st time to commit herself to God. I asked how she felt and she said really good. I was so excited for her and it was really cool that I got to meet her and write about her just a few weeks ago!

Thursday I got to do something really fun. The doctor asked me if I would prepare something for the kids that would be a fun activity but also educational about nutrition, hygiene, or whatever. I was really excited for the opportunity to be a real nurse and do some community health education (My professor Kelly Schwend would be so proud 😀 ) So I decided to do something on WASHING YOUR HANDS, because we’re taught over and over that the “number one way to prevent the spread of infection is by washing your hands”. José Luis, husband of the doctor, was gracious enough to take a video of my teaching/activity, so I’m uploading it to youtube so you can watch!

Teaching the kids about hand washing at a school up in the mountains.

At first we talked about what germs are, if they’re big or small, good or bad, where they live, etc. I tried to make it really interactive so they shouted out answers and stayed attentive. Then we had a skit to show how germs are spread. My friend Patricia started out, sick with the flu and a cough, and let out a big sneeze into her hands, then wiped them on her shirt and went to class. The video picks up from this point. We had a couple volunteers to help us out, and they unknowingly passed germs to one another, unaware that Patricia was sick. In case you don’t understand Spanish, after the skit we talked about the best way to kill germs, when to wash your hands, and how to wash your hands. It went really well, I was excited! I felt much more secure knowing that the translator was by my side in case I needed her, but thank God I was able to handle the majority on my own! 🙂 Yay for improving my Spanish! Here’s the video if you want to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bACUoVQjiUE&feature=youtu.be

And just for funsies, here’s a breathtaking view that I got to experience that’s just minutes away walking from the school. This is in someone’s backyard. You could see the whole valley, mountains, trees, pineapple patches, and the volcano in Masaya. I can’t imagine waking up to this every morning:

I’m not in Illinois anymore…

Okay, that sounds like a good stopping point, but I really want to share about my 1st week in the hospital while my thoughts and emotions are still fresh, so if this is getting too long, go take a lil breaksie’s and come back because I have more to share!

So you may or may not know, but I have been blessed with an opportunity to practice nursing in an actual hospital here in Managua! Working with the doctor for almost 2 months was really great and I enjoyed it, but I’m looking forward to some “real-deal” hospital nursing work like what I plan to do when I get back. Nadia has a doctor friend, who connected us with another doctor, who connected us with the director of the hospital. We talked with the director and gave them the papers saying I passed my NCLEX (still waiting on my license), but they gave me the okay to practice as a nurse here in their hospital! I’m really blessed because this is the 1st time they have done something like this. I will be spending 1 month working there as a real-life nurse as a voluntary service. They’re doing me a large favor by providing such a great opportunity, but at the same time, I guess I’m providing them one too because they get an extra full-time nurse for a month for free. (Which, by the way, I found out the average monthly pay of a nurse is about what I’ll make in a couple days in the States) So no worries Dad, there’s no way I could pay off my thousands of dollars in loans starting off with a Nican salary.

My first day, I was confident and friendly but secretly scared out of my pants. Don’t tell them that, though. :S Then again, who’s not slightly nervous on their very 1st day of a big girl job?! Now considering it’s in a foreign country, in another language, in a medical system that works very differently from ours….I think I had reason. My first day was long, at times boring, but at times very busy and fun. I got to draw up a lot of medications. The unit I’m working on is called Area de Hospitalización (I’ll let you translate that one), and it’s kind of a hodge podge of patients, but the majority is Pediatrics! They have a several larger rooms that can host about 5-7 patients. There is a room for adult males, adult females, respiratory illness kids, diarrhea kids, and miscellaneous illness kids. There’s nothing like putting together a roomful of hacking, coughing, pneumonia filled children to put you on the speedy road to recovery! Yikes. 

There is an average of 20-25 patients in total, and there are 3 nurses, and a “charge nurse”, that has a role similar to the charge nurses in the states. Instead of each nurse being assigned 4-5 specific patients, they kind of all share the patients. I think they do have assignments, but it’s not total care for their patients. For example, meds are given at 8am, 12p, 4p, and 1 nurse (plus me!), prepares allll the medications for allll the patients. And then goes to administer alll the meds. I’m not a huge fan of this system because I feel there is much larger room for error, because the nurse has to do so many meds, that precision starts to slack. Plus since they don’t watch “specific patients” as closely, it would be harder to detect side effects or dosage errors. Plus they don’t change their gloves between patients, and they don’t “scrub the hub” before injecting IV medication  (Prof. Joe would probably have a heart attack if he saw…but Joe if you read this, you trained me well because I make sure I have some alcohol and cotton swabs to clean it before I inject anything).

1st day of work!

I’ve prepared and given a lot of oral meds, IV meds, Nebulizer treatments, hung new IV bags, taken vital signs, and other random things that they ask me to do. I’m slowly figuring out their paper charting system. Oh and this I don’t like, the nurses hardly AT ALL do a nursing assessment. “Report” in the morning is like…Here is such and such, he has this illness, blah blah, next patient. The extent of their assessment is pretty much vital signs. The nurses don’t even carry stethoscopes on them, so they don’t do any to heart, lung, bowels assessment, nor have I seen them do neuro assessments, GI/GU assessments, IV flushes, nada. I spent my summer internship last year in the ICU at St. Francis, so our report was excessively thorough, and we did every assessment possible, and knew pretty much anything and everything about our patients. 

The medical staff here is much like nursing/hospital staff in the US….they’re nice..but not necessarily friendly. They’re not rude to me, they answer my questions and help me out when I need it, but there not exactly like super interested or make much of an effort to reach out or talk to me. I wish they would do more training, because their idea of me is that “she’s a nurse”…I don’t think they realize I’m a JUST GRADUATED nurse with “newbie” stamped on my forehead. So I wish I would have a little more direction so I am more confident and know what I’m doing, but I can’t be spoon fed everything so it’s been a good experience to train me to step out and learn things & ask questions, even when I’m not totally comfortable. 

But I am very, very thankful for this opportunity…God has seriously been providing for me the whole time here. I didn’t do anything to work for this opportunity, it was basically placed in my lap, gift-wrapped with a bow on top. Seriously! What better could I ask for than these 2 Nursing experiences with Dra. Valle & the hospital; it’s been such a great chance to practice my Spanish and Nursing, and I couldn’t thank God enough. I couldn’t have planned this better. This has just confirmed to me how this really was (& is) His will for me to be serving here for the time being.

Okay, I know it’s been long, but if you read it all, thank you so much! I’m finally all caught up in my blog about my life, so now in the future I won’t be so behind. Whew! My fingers feel like they ran a marathon, so it’s time to sleep! Thanks for reading! God bless! Leave comments!