Life of a Student Nurse

162.We were once student nurses. Newbies in the health world, at the bottom of the food chain, still clinging on to the aprons of our motherly clinical instructors. Hesitations abounding every procedure. Awe at ongoing surgeries and newborn births at special areas. Thousands of boring lectures. Refining our growing skills at the skills laboratory. A hundred reports, case studies, presentations and researches. Countless nights burning the midnight candle to beat deadlines. Dramatic and fierce competitiveness at the urgency of completing the magic 5- deliveries, assists, major and minor surgeries and newborn cares, that were all prerequisites for graduation. Community exposures where we braved all sorts of natural calamities while waiting for our pricey school bus. Being exposed to overly strict instructors, sour staff nurses, yelling doctors, grouchy patients, crazy patients who knew no personal boundaries and the risk of contracting infectious diseases like tuberculosis and Hep-B. Now the positive side of the entire thing. The experiences we've gotten were priceless in developing character, skills, attitudes and knowledge. We've gotten stronger and closer as a class. Teamwork, team-building experiences were priceless. We've met people from all walks of life-- families from selected communities whom we have given much-needed health education and classes, elderly patients from the homes, psych patients from the local mental health care institution, patients from various hospitals who had various conditions. Working for the first time with experienced staff nurses as they brought new life into the world at delivery rooms and health centers. The amazing feeling of assisting at a surgery and handling all those gleaming, sterile instruments and getting our gloves bloodied. The rush of urgency of activity at the emergency room where we learned to assess and carry out life-saving interventions in the nick of time. And to be a witness to not only of life, but also of death.  There are just some things that are inevitable and we learned to accept death as a part of life, and as nurses we needed to give those who died dignity even in death. Nurses are there for the greatest events of humanity-from birth through adulthood until death, during happy times, desperate times when the will to live is tested. Being a nurse is a heavy burden indeed. These challenges, we solved them in our own ways didn't we? And come graduation, we were ready to face our next challenge- the  dreaded nurses' licensure examinations. But that's another story all together.