Almost The End...

I can't believe my time at Langara is almost done. I have 2 shifts left in my preceptorship at the burn unit and then a couple days of classes and that's it! I had an interview to work on the unit last week and I think it went pretty well. I applied for a .8 position which is 3 days on, 6 days off rather than the full time of 4 on 5 off. The fact that I want a part time position will actually help me get the job.
It's too bad I didn't blog more during my preceptorship because I've been able to see a lot of neat things. My preceptor, Cathy, has been phenomenal and I've been lucky to have such a good mentor. I really love the unit and I hope to work there for at least a year. I contacted doctors without borders to see if, when I'm ready to apply, they would be interested in someone who was on the burns/plastics/trauma unit at VGH and they gave me a list of what they prefer so it looks like I will have to switch it up at some point, maybe do some street nursing on the downtown eastside since that's community nursing.
I was visiting Ainslie at her job on the downtown eastside and I actually saw a former patient of mine that I had even written about in this blog. The one at St. paul's who was pretty rude to me and I ended up crying in the bathroom for a while. Ainslie figured she wouldn't recognize me but in actual fact she did. She said "do I know you from somewhere?" and I said "no I don't think so..." and she said "are you sure? you look very familiar...are you an outreach worker anywhere else?" and I said no I wasn't. I guess I just didn't want to see her reaction when I told her who I was.
The last bit of exciting news is that I have been voted by my peers to be one of two emcees at our grad event! I'm pretty honoured and I'm looking forward to it.

Darn it I forgot something

I got straight A's this semester! 1 A+ amd 2 A minuses I feel that the A+ balances out the A minuses haha.

Preceptorship Developments!

Exciting news! I had been having trouble getting in touch with my precpetor (the nurse I'll be working with on the burn unit). I sent her three emails, two from my yahoo account and one from hotmail saying I'd had issues with other senders not receiving my mail. Anyway
I got in touch with her finally! I contacted the coordinator at Langara who sets up our preceptorships and told her I hadn't heard back from my preceptor. She suggested I call the unit so I did that, expecting to find out cathy (the preceptor) was on holidays. Turns out she was on the unit. I was so nervous about talking to her because I felt like it would look like I was stalking her seeing as how I had already sent her all those emails and was now calling her at work!

So she picked up the phone and sounded really nice and young and said she hadn't gotten any emails, that she guesses her work email must have been filtering them out. She hasn't had a preceptor student before and I explained that I've never done any under graduate nursing. So she said we'll have a really easy assignment for the first week at least. I asked her if it really is an area with very high-acuity and she said yes it can be.

I'm all anxious now because it almost feels like I can hear my horrible instructor Ginger from the summer in my head telling me that I'm not going to be able to do it.

I was getting all upset and I think Ainslie might have said that it'll all work out the way it's meant to or maybe it was someone else but that helped me a lot. Below is the email that she sent to me with her shifts...I don't know what she's talking about with 16 weeks but I definitely go way longer than that.


hey! great to finally touch base with you! i was beginning to wonder what was happening with that whole preceptor thing that laurie, our educator, was talking about... anyways, if i remember right, the last one is 16 shifts all together, right? either way, i'll give you my schedule for 16 shifts starting on the 15th...

jan 15th day
jan 16th day
jan 17th day
jan 18th day

jan 24th day
jan 25th day
jan 26th day
jan 27th day

feb 2nd day
feb 3rd day
feb 4th day
feb 5th day

feb 11th day
feb 12th day
feb 13th day
feb 14th day

so, i guess other than that, like i said, don't hesitate to email or call me and i'll see you on the 15th!! merry christmas!--cathy