www.littlenars.com | Dianne Peña

Most of us dreams of becoming the boss of the bosses, I mean, we always envision ourselves on the top. We want to fulfill the 5th stage in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which is the Self-Actualization stage less do we know that in attaining that, we have to deal with such great responsibilities.

Experiencing the shoes of Ospital ng Maynila-Medicine Ward’s Head Nurse for 3 days made me remember one line from my favorite movie, Spider-Man that says “With great power comes great responsibility…”

Before the RLE exposure, when I hear the word “Head Nursing” from my fellow batch mates, it is always coupled with the words “TOXIC, PAPER WORKS and TOXIC” and when I was the one on duty, I proved them right. You have to prepare for your activities and you need to monitor your staff nurses all the time. Honestly, I even forgot how it is to urinate because I was busy facilitating my staff nurses. You have to comply with the paper works and you need to evaluate your staff. You are the boss and the decision always comes from you it’s like you call the shot and you are the final say. If you look at the brighter side, being the boss gives you pleasure and you don’t need to do bedside care and other “dirty” nursing procedures however, decision making is a great deal and responsibility, once you made a mistake you can ruin one’s life.

With that, I learned that being a head nurse isn’t an easy job especially if you’re working in a Government Hospital in which, there are a lot of patients and most of the time, the ideal procedures are being set aside. If I were to be a head nurse now, 1 million stacks of rice which I will still need to harvest and cook isn’t even a bit enough. Being a head nurse for 3 days with 3 male staff nurses in my team is somewhat difficult because they males usually needs a little push to do their duties and responsibilities nevertheless, they are fun to be with because they don’t have negative side comments as to what I say.

In conclusion, I had a great experience as a head nurse and I may say that it really aided in my learning though some of my expectations and objectives were not met due to some undesired circumstances. This is my last duty as a student nurse. I am quite nostalgic with it because it may take a long time for me to be able to have my duty again as a REAL staff nurse— reality speaking.

I am coming out to the real world and with me are my memories, knowledge, skills and attitude from the four years that I have been studying my chosen career— that will serve as my sword and shield in my facing my future challenges.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Clinical Rotations, FEU, Student Nurse's Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.