Today I spent most of the day with Dr. Mills, but after lunch, I spent the afternoon with one of the pediatric nurses so that I could get the nurses’ perspective of pediatrics.
During the first part of the day, I got to see and learn several different things. The first patient had cerebral palsy, a condition that involves impaired muscle coordination because of some sort of disconnect between the brain and muscles. This same patient was born with a twisted bowel and had to have two surgeries to untwist it. I asked if there was any correlation between the cerebral palsy and twisted bowel, and apparently there is some debate about the answer. Some doctors think the surgeries to correct the bowel cause a shock to the system, which then caused the cerebral palsy, but other doctors say that it is a complete coincidence. Most cases of cerebral palsy are idiopathic, meaning there is no identifiable cause.
There was a teething baby who came in today, and the mom expressed some concern that she thought one of the protruding teeth was blue. Dr. Mills checked his mouth then showed me that there was a little blue bubble surrounding the tooth, but the tooth itself was not blue. It is called an eruption cyst, which is when the blood vessels get irritated and look blue where the tooth is coming in.
I learned something today that I am extremely surprised I haven’t learned before. Dr. Mills was examining a month-old baby who kept reaching for a black cord, which was directly contrasting in color with the white walls. Dr. Mills watched him alertly interacting and playing with the cord and said that he was drawn to the black and white contrast because babies don’t develop color vision until they are about four months old. Until then, their vision is only able to pick up black and white. I can’t believe that was new information to me!
After lunch, Dr. Mills asked me if I would like to see the job of a pediatric nurse, so I spent the rest of my time with nurse Toya. She was extremely good at explaining the normal routine of her job. I was surprised at how fast-paced it was. A lot of the time she was calling patients back and asking them all of the preliminary questions, but when she wasn’t doing that, she was preparing her rooms for the next families, charting information for patients, doing labs, or drawing up and administering vaccines. She was very good at showing me the whole system on the computer and how she knew what her next task was. While I liked spending the afternoon with her, I am definitely more drawn to NICU nursing rather than pediatric nursing. Like I’ve said many times before, I think it’s hard to beat how hands-on a NICU nurse’s job is, and that is what I really liked about it.
As of today, my intensive experience is over, and tomorrow will be a long day trying to put together as much of the presentation as possible. I definitely feel as though I accomplished everything I wanted to during these three weeks, including all four of my goals. As a reminder, these are the goals I had for this intensive:
-To determine if I would like to pursue a career as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse
-To determine if I would like to pursue a career as a pediatrician
-To explore the differences in practice between pediatric (neonatal) nurses and
physicians
-To learn and be able to identify the equipment used in the NICU
I got a really good picture of the life of a NICU nurse by spending so much time in the NICU for the first two weeks, and I found myself really liking the job. It fits a lot of the criteria I am looking for in a future career: a hands-on job in the medical field working with newborn infants. While it is no doubt emotionally taxing at times, I could definitely see myself in that role a few years down the road. I really liked the pace throughout the day; most of the time it was very unhurried yet still busy. One of the things I liked the most is that there are no appointments, which I think often tend to create a rushed schedule, which was absent in the NICU.
Regarding my second and third goals, I don’t think I want to be a pediatrician. While I love kids, I don’t think medical school and becoming a doctor is for me just because I am looking for a job where I am the primary care for the patient, whereas pediatricians like Dr. Mills only spend a fraction of an hour with each patient, and then they’re on to the next. I have reflected a lot throughout my blogs lately on the differences that I observed between nurses and physicians, the biggest difference being that the nurses tend to do most of the hands-on work, whereas doctors (both neonatologists and pediatricians) are there to oversee everything and order everything from drugs and labs to X-rays.
I most definitely feel like I accomplished my fourth goal. Throughout my two weeks, I learned in an incredible amount about so many of the machines and equipment the nurses use in the NICU, as I have shown throughout all of the blog posts I did. I saw so much more in the NICU than I was expecting. I saw and felt what it was like to lose a baby. I saw babies everywhere from less than a pound to over 15 pounds. I saw very healthy babies and extremely sick, critical babies. And I even got to see a C-section! It really was an amazing experience that I’m sure very few high schoolers get to have.
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