A Student Nurse Finishes Top of Her Class

I know that it is probably a bit indulgent, but I thought I’d start the week off with a short story.

A Student Nurse Finishes Top of Her Class

Shirley felt a tingle in her stomach. In a few hours she would be finished the practical component of her training and there would only be a couple of paper tests between her and final qualification. Exams held no fear for her. She had never fallen outside the top 1% of the class since the start of the course. In a few weeks time she would have badge above her left breast with the words, ‘Shirley O’Reilly RGN’. The three years of hard work would be over and it would all have been worth it.

There was only one blemish on Shirley’s wonderful training record and this was that she had not yet been able to witness and assist in a cardiac arrest. Involvement with resuscitation was not vital for qualification, but boxes that weren’t ticked seriously pissed her off. It felt important to Shirley that the student nurse assessment book be fully complete. The fact that no other student had managed to complete as many objectives as her meant nothing; if Shirley didn’t get this final tick on the assigned checklist she would feel like a total failure.

Waiting for a Heart Attack

There was another reason why viewing a cardiac arrest was important for Shirley. Upon qualification the plan was for her to go work in a private residential home for the elderly. She knew that exciting things like resuscitation were unheard of in this type of sedate settings. The old dears tended to slip off to the next world while still asleep. Good for them, but not so good for a highly skilled and newly qualified nurse who was itching to put her expensive training to good use. Shirley resented her obligation to work with her aunt after qualification, but she would never have been able to attend the nursing course without financial assistance from her family – the residential home was a family concern.

Shirley spent a few years trudging away as a care assistant in the family business. This wasn’t what inspired her to become a nurse though. In fact, truth be known, it sort of put her off the idea of working with people. She found old folks to be far too demanding and annoying. What really inspired her to want to enter the profession was her sick grandfather. He had been on death’s door for years with osphageal cancer; the doctors were amazed at how he kept on going as they had only given him days to live. It had gotten so bad that he had his food passed into his blood stream through an IV tube. A nurse came every day to check on his feeding and pain medication pumps. It was this the masterly way that this nurse handled the machines that really inspired Shirley to become an RGN.

Her last hours on placement were ticking by in the emergency unit. It was a busy night in the hospital, but there were no serious cases to make things interesting. Shirley was fed up already with patients complaining with trivial problems; one of her first lessons that she had learnt as a student nurse was that demanding patients are rarely very sick; it’s the quite ones who offer the best chance for excitement. The only real exception to this was the head injury patients who could be going nuts because of a brain hemorrhage. There were no head injuries tonight though, just ungrateful whiners.

A Welcome Visitor

The dullness of the accident and emergency unit was interrupted by an alarm followed by a phone call saying that the ambulance was on its way. An elderly man had suffered a cardiac arrest. The whole unit was put on standby and the minor cases were moved back to the waiting room. Shirley could feel the excitement and anticipation fill the room. The head nurse came over and told her that it looked like she might get to assist in resuscitation after all; Shirley tried hard not to look too pleased.

There was a rush of movement as the swing doors banged open and the man was brought in on the stretcher. The emergency crew were surrounding him and doing cardiac compressions. The nurses took over as the accident and emergency room consultant began to shout orders. As the body was dragged from the stretcher onto the resuscitation table, Shirley felt someone push her forward. It was the head nurse volunteering her as the person to take over the cardiac compressions. Shirley needed to stand on a stool to get in the correct position but she was soon pumping down on the old man’s chest like a pro. The anesthetist was putting a plastic airway into the man’s mouth, but she briefly paused to complement Shirley on her good technique.

Shirley realized that this was probably going to be the most exciting thing that was going to happen in her nursing career – even though it hadn’t really even started yet. She stared down at the familiar face on the emergency room table and silently thanked him for giving her this one chance to feel what it was like to be a real nurse. Putting the potassium in the IV line of her grandfather’s feeding pump had been an excellent idea. She knew that within seconds of turning it on for his evening feed he would be having problems and grandmother would call the ambulance to take him right to her.

The consultant looked solemn as he told everyone that to stop; the patient was dead. Shirley knew she would miss her grandfather but she consoled herself by thinking about how he had always been such a useful ally and remained that way right up until the end.