Pediatric ICU

Today I spent the day in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for my first day of our "clinical enhancement" week. I had such a great experience but it definitely was an emotional day. My mentor "J" is a Transport Nurse in the PICU so she goes on ambulance and helicopter rides to get patients from other hospitals. When she is waiting for a call she helps out the other nurses and does odd jobs around the PICU which seems like a pretty cool job that would never get boring. She was an amazing nurse and really helpful to all of the other nurses. The PICU is pretty cool because the nurses have a small patient load (1-2 at a time) and have a ton of autonomy. They were doing a ton of bedside procedures and monitoring on their patients and the doctors were letting them do it all.

The PICU had patients ranging from 3 months to 17 years old today so I was able to see a wide variety of things. A lot of patients that come in are Non Accidental Trauma's, which is the politically correct way of saying abuse cases. To protect patient identities I won't go into much detail but these young kids had bruises and signs of trauma all over their body that makes you sick to think about. Sadly a lot of these kids that are abused when they are younger become brain dead or mentally delayed so they never really recover. They have to not only deal with the emotional trauma but it truly effects them for the rest of their life. Another thing I was surprised about is that in the PICU they get a lot of teenagers that overdose on drugs or drink too much alcohol. It was strange to see a three month old baby in a room next to a teenager who was on drugs.

To finish off this post I will tell you about the best and worst (AKA most embarrassing) part of my day! The best part was when my mentor was putting an IV in a baby and I was able to hold the baby and keep his arm straight (he was very very strong so this was harder than it sounds) while she did it. I really felt like I was helping her and I was able to comfort the baby while he was being stuck, poked and prodded.  The most embarrassing part of my day occurred when J and I went to find some supplies in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) and I opened the wrong door and set off the alarm that prevents people from stealing babies in the hospital. Whoops! The NICU nurses didn't think it was as funny as J did because she ended up telling everyone back in the PICU that I tried to steal a baby.