nursing life

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom from psalms, hymns, and songs from the spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts and whatever you do whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Colossians 3:16-17

I'm finally feeling inspired again- finally excited about some aspects of life. I can finally breathe again, think clearly, begin to see the bigger picture.

The last 5 weeks have been such a struggle for me- with starting nursing- and doing nights. I feel like starting a totally new job on nights, while trying to work my part time job and taking classes- really just threw me out to sea.

Working during the night is so hard physically and emotionally. I finished 4 weeks of nights but it felt like a quest of survival. I think there are sometimes you just have to hang on tight and pray it's over soon. I have no desire to ever work nightshift again or try to stay up all night and there are so many reasons why I believe it's unhealthy. Yet I know that in a couple months I will have to do night shift again, and I plan on preparing for it and going about it much differently.

Before starting nursing, I had alot of expectations of what it would be like to work full time and be a pediatric nurse. And I'd be lying if I didn't say that many of those expectations were totally crushed in my first five weeks. It's dissapointing when you have really high expectations and you realize that many of the things you want will not be happening any time soon; but it's also reality and it's ok.

I really believe that God wants to use us where we are at to be a blessing and that He calls us to experience joy in every situation and opportunity. I know that the pediatric hospital is an amazing place to learn how to take care of little babies and children and that's what I am so excited to do! It's discouraging when you realize that as a new nurse, you know so very little about everything, and require so much help. Yet I am so excited about what I'm learning because I know it will teach me how to care for kids better which I love to do!

The first four weeks of nursing really destroyed my morale in so many ways and I had a terrible attitude about life and nursing. I had a really difficult clinical instructor who was extremely critical and perfectionistic and never offered positive feedback. But upon transitioning to days, both my clinical instructors have been extremely positive and have given me tons of praise and positive feedback which has been really helpful.

During night shifts, it was extremely hard to practice eating healthy food, just because eating patterns in general were destroyed. Not to mention, it was so hard to workout because literally every day I felt so exhausted. I was having to drink caffeine just to survive shifts which definitely affects mood and energy levels. There was also just some other personal issues that I had to deal with while on night shifts that made it so much harder.

I'm super thankful to be on days right now. I'm thankful for my new job and for my clinical preceptors that are really kind. I'm thankful for supportive friends and I'm so glad I got time off to rest and recover. My goal for the next couple of weeks is to focus on Christ and to have a really positive nursing attitude. I want to try and focus on the small things like eating right, exercise, sleep, personal devotional time, because those things make a really big difference.