Nursing School Humor

Happy Wednesday. Here's a LOLcat before I dive back in to my Psych Nursing book.


photo by Lunaticus of allnurses.com

An Orientation to My Feelings on Orientations

Well, today was that day nursing students and healthcare workers know all too well:

The Orientation.

I always find it a little strange that they call it an orientation, because it somehow implies that we are disoriented before it takes place. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't walk in the door of a hospital and immediately forget about HIPAA or fire procedures. Which is what we went over this morning. For an hour. Even my concern over being extremely rude wasn't enough to keep me from doing the sleepy head-bob while we were going over something for the sixth time that wasn't all that interesting the first time anyway.

But, I know it's something both the hospital and the nursing school have to do in order to decrease their liability in case something happens. So, I just keep my mouth shut and do what they tell me. Not to mention the age-old rule of nursing school: you play by their rules or you don't play at all.

There was one good thing about it, though. I'm doing my clinical rotation at a different hospital than the one I work at, and I don't have a lot of experience at other hospitals. It was interesting to see how this hospital was different from the one where I work. It even, dare I say it, made me appreciate where I work all the more. The charting system for the Clinicals hospital is a DOS-based program that was not only antiquated, but not very intuitive. I got along with it okay in the class we had, but I don't know if I'll be able to find stuff again when I'm on the floor researching my patient. Hopefully the other nurses will be able to help us out. The charting system where I work is much newer and just plain better in terms of flexibility. So, there you go, you have to see other places more to appreciate what you've got.

The familiar nursing school feeling of being just a tad overwhelmed is back. Monday was the first day of classes, and already this week I have a quiz over a Med-Surg chapter, homework over a different Med-Surg chapter due, two chapters to read for Mental Health, and a chapter to read for Pharm. Woohoo!! Good thing I have tomorrow completely off while the other half of the group cycles through clinicals. I will use the time!

I love being busy. Christmas break is entirely too long.

Domestication

As I promised in the last post, I will tell you about the journey my family has gone through to perfect the making of carmel pies. Carmel pie is my dad's favorite dessert, and his mom always makes sure to have one ready when we go to visit her. Eventually, we got the idea that we could actually make our own, and asked mom-maw for the recipe. She gave it willingly (almost too willingly) and we set off home again, anxious to make our own carmel pie.

Mom tried them first. She tried, and tried, and tried. I shudder to think at the sheer volume of sugar she melted that day in her courageous but fruitless attempts to achieve the pie nirvana that is carmel pie.

After the smoke cleared, mom conceded defeat and we all immediately blamed mom-maw for giving us a bad recipe so we'd be forced to visit her every time we wanted a carmel pie. Her name was mud around here for a good six months. Every time a recipe didn't turn out from then on, even if mom-maw had never touched it, she was blamed.

The next time we visited mom-maw, we asked her to wait until we got there to make the pies so we could watch. Watch we did, and my dear husband took copious amounts of ridiculously detailed notes about the entire process.

So armed, we returned home and tried again.

Another dismal failure. This time we knew exactly what mom-maw had used (and there were, in fact, a few minor deviations from the recipe, although mom-maw swears to this day it's correct). We knew how long and how hot to make it. We knew everything she'd done, but it still turned out into a runny, flour-flavored catastrophe.

A couple more attempts were made over the last year or so, and were again met with disappointing results. Then, my dad became a fan of Alton Brown. This pretty much sums up Mr. Brown:



My dad is a geek. He loves the explanations and education of AB's show. He watched a few episodes, applied a little cooking chemistry (and a lot of time and use of the stand mixer he got this Christmas), and viola! The infamous carmel pie.



Top with mirangue, bake a bit, and you have yourself a delectable treat.



A pie composed nearly entirely of melted sugar.

Needless to say - it was consumed quickly and enjoyed immensely.