I’m a nurse!

I have worked as a call center agent, an English tutor, and a freelance content writer but I have never worked as a nurse until January of this year. It has been a rough ride. I had a hard time accepting the fact that I was a bum for a year. Actually, lots of significant events happened in 2012 required my utmost cooperation thus the long pause in my career jump-start.

Nevertheless, here I am now. I am a nurse in one of the biggest hospitals here in Iloilo City. This will give me the verdict on whether or not I really am called to be in this field as this is my first working experience in the profession.

We started last January 14. Our ward’s full census is only 12 because it caters to Pay or Service patients who have Philhealth. In a hospital like ours, that is relatively small compared to other medical wards. At first, I was literally lost. There are just lots of logbooks and forms and the flow of requests for some procedures seem to be awkward, at least in my point of view. But I was reminded by what our Chief Training Officer told us during our orientation, that our cups should only be half-full so that there will be room for learning and adjustment. It may be different from what I was used to during my college hospital exposure but the bottom line is still the same – to deliver the best care that we can to our patients.

To this day, I am yet to learn things about nursing in the actual setting. My cup is still half-empty as I have not encountered a lot of cases, medications, procedures, and folks yet. But I think love where I am and what I’m doing now so far. I may be exhausted but when I find myself delaying my meals just so I can give the patient’s medications on time and check on his vitals, I feel happy.

My first family at WVMC

A 55-year old called me, by my first name, when he was feeling helpless. “Ma’am Apple,” he said. A 2 year-old boy calls me Tita Apple too. These little things make me feel like I made the right decision, that even if I just succumbed to the path that I was forced to take, one which I never wanted to tread at first, it will still lead me to happiness and fulfillment. True enough, I’ve got that nurse in me.