Mrs. Mauney worked in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for eight years but is currently not practicing because she decided to stay home while she had small children. Nursing is one of the career paths that allows for flexibility like that and nurses are always needed. Since she graduated in 1998 the demand for nurses has increased in hospitals, doctor’s offices, schools, home health, hospice, mental institutions, etc. She felt very drawn to the medical field and nursing seemed like a great choice for her. Mrs. Mauney loved it because it offered such a variety of career opportunities which was good because she didn’t know what exactly she wanted to do. “I didn’t know exactly what type of nursing I wanted to do at the age of 19. That’s a big decision for someone that age who doesn’t even know what they want to do tomorrow!” She found her job very rewarding but at times it was very difficult. Mrs. Mauney said that she loved watching a baby go home but the challenging part was to watch a family mourn as their baby either struggles or passes away; watching them go home empty handed. The character traits she said that a nurse in any field needs to have is patience, especially for a family who may be angry as they struggle with a sick child. A nurse also needs endurance and needs to be willing to go the extra mile for their patient. As a nurse you must be kind and selfless; you must think of others more than yourself and put your patient’s needs before your own. The ability to work well with others is also a very essential trait a nurse must have. They need to be able to work with all personality types because you do not get to choose who you work with or what patients you get.
The ability to practice nursing comes with a pretty heavy cost. There is hard work and schooling that must be done in order to graduate from the nursing school and have a job in that field. There are many different degrees to attain in this field but to even apply for nursing school the completion of two years of specific courses is required. There is an Associate Degree in nursing (ADN) and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree (BSN) program. To be able to seek career advancement it would be more beneficial to get a BSN. Once accepted into a nursing program, it takes 2 years to complete. There is classroom learning, and learning that takes place in the clinical setting. Upon completion of the nursing program, the Alabama Board of Nursing's State Board Exam must be passed. If the exam is passed, you are allowed to practice nursing within the state you took the board exam. The nursing license has to be renewed every 2 years in order to keep an active status, which gives the right to practice nursing. The hiring process includes making a resume, getting letters of recommendations, and interviews. The people hiring are looking for the ability to perform skills, ability to be taught and learn new things, personable people, and enthusiasm for the job. Also there is training and orientation with another nurse for three to six months, depending on experience, before taking on your own patients.
A typical day for Mrs. Mauney in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit started by arriving at 6:45 in the morning and getting a report from the previous RN, which included a head to toe report of how the baby had been doing on the previous shift and sharing any changes or pertinent information for the continued care of the baby while on her shift. She usually only had 2 babies to care for at a time because of their critical condition (sometimes only one). Mrs. Mauney would then check all the equipment (monitors, IV pumps, etc.) to make sure they were functioning properly and that the alarm limits were set correctly. After a thorough scrub down (a required 3 minute hand-washing before touching the babies), she did a head-to-toe assessment of the baby, documenting all her findings, so that she would have a good baseline to compare later assessments to. If there were any changes that needed reporting to the doctor, she notified them and carried out any orders given. She would also give any medications throughout the day that needed to be given which was always on a strict schedule. Most babies in the NICU are critically ill, requiring minimal stimulation, so they try to keep the environment low lit, quiet, and touch the babies a little as possible. Many of them are on ventilators, so the babies are closely monitored. For example, if a baby's heart rate drops, or their oxygen level drops, she would stimulate the baby to see if they just need to breathe. If that did not work, she would increase the oxygen on their ventilator, or take them off the ventilator and manually give them breaths with an ambu bag, watching for their heart rate and oxygen to go back up. Doctors are always close-by and available to intervene if a code situation arises.
Mrs. Mauney said that she wished she had gotten more hands on experience in school and had a better understanding of the job opportunities. She said that nursing is such a great field, especially for females. Her advice to someone entering this career field was to go straight through school because you can be finished by the time you are 22 years old. Having the opportunity to learn more about this career has excited me even more to continue on the nursing major path. There are so many different opportunities with this career and I am excited to learn about each one and decide which would be best for me.
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