Well,
it has happened, I have finished my first week here in Houston. Boy has it been
a crazy one. Sarah and I applied for the waterfront apartment building, and
were accepted. We received our keys yesterday and will be spending the next two
days moving our things in around our work shifts. We have rented furniture, set
up our utilities, and are very excited. I'm very ready to have a place to call
"home," as the Studio 6 just doesn't cut it.
We
also spent three 8-hour day shifts at the hospital doing our hospital
orientation. Most of these hours were spent going over hospital policy,
equipment use, and the electronic health record. We were able to spend four
hours on our units getting oriented to the layout and workflow. I think
the hardest thing to get adapted to will be the EHR. It is very different from
the one I am used to at Fletcher Allen, but I am sure in a few weeks it’ll feel
normal and will be a breeze. A lot of the equipment the hospital uses is
similar to FAHC, so that is very reassuring. Also, nursing is nursing, and I
know that I can be a great nurse no matter the facility.
All
week Sarah and I have been hanging out with some awesome nurses who are here on
travel assignments, also. We have mostly been hanging out with a girl from
Indiana, one from Illinois, and a guy who is from the Galveston area and just
finished a travel assignment in Vermont. There are four other travel nurses who
are just wonderful, also. It is nice to have them as resources, friends, and
people to hang out with outside of work. Their travel experience ranges from
this being their first assignment, to some that have been traveling for years.
Tonight
is my first regular shift, and I am both excited and nervous. Being on the
floor for those four hours on Wednesday really helped to take some of the
nerves out of the equation. The patient population seems very nice and
wonderful, so I am excited about that. I was only able to sleep for about 3
hours this afternoon, and that was mostly because I was too nerved up to sleep.
However, I have faith that tonight is going to go very smoothly. We have almost
finalized our schedule through to the end of the year. They use self scheduling
here, so we basically were able to pick all of our shifts. We are just waiting
on final approval from our manager. So all in all I think things are going
well. I’ll be excited for next week to be over so I can be settled in the new
apartment and also have a week of work under my belt.
