Week Six down

And now there's only three more to go.

This past week was FULL of exciting firsts!

On Thursday, we had our first orientation at the long-term care facility. We had a short tour of the building, and reviewed our instructor's expectations of us as student nurses. We also got to wear our lab coats and ID badges for the first time. Super exciting!

Considering all of the negative preconceived notions I had regarding long-term care facilities, I was pleasantly surprised. The facility has two wings: one for short-term care, and another for long-term care. Short-term care had much more energy, more obvious interaction between patients and staff, and a much brighter ambiance. Long-term care seemed much... slower. And routine. And kind of sad.

On Friday, we gave our first injections. I already LOVE this new class. We have yet to actually stick a real person -- that's on Monday -- but that was fine by me. I had enough trouble drawing saline into the syringe from an ampule or a vial.

I still haven't quite grown that nurse's "third arm," but my instructor swears she can see a little bud growing.

I can already tell, this is going to take a LOT of practice.