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Image: Keith Brofsky | Photodisc | Thinkstock
Next week I will be in orientation. I haven’t been in a real orientation in many years. Whenever I would change jobs in the past, I would move from one ED to another ED. I would get a week or less of orientation to learn their paperwork and policies, otherwise, ED nursing is ED nursing. Now I have to completely learn a new way to practice nursing.
I just got off the phone with my new manager. I am going from being the manager to back to staffing; I kind of like the idea of that. I am going to be orienting for about two months. I will be going from seeing 20 to 30 patients per day, to seeing a handful per day. I will be going from being on my feet all day and running my tail off to talking to patients on the phone and triaging patients over the phone.
I actually loved working in triage as an ED nurse. Meeting with a patient for just a few minutes, getting their history and really trying to determine what is happening with them. Being able to look at a patient and determining how sick they are and using my nursing judgment to help them. Now I will be doing the same thing, but over the phone. How am supposed to determine how they look…all those things I could assess on a patient as soon as they walked through those doors? Now I have to figure out those things on the phone.
It’s scary but exciting. I am looking forward to all the changes I am making in my life and the challenges that come along with it.
