For my practicum site I shadowed the nurses and doctors at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. I was able to be at this site through nurse Chris Wentker. I have known his daughter since Kindergarten and played baseball with his son in highschool and became friends with him. Upon highschool graduation and him finding out I was going into nursing he told me that anytime I wanted to come by the hospital and learn the door was wide open for me. When I got into UMD and got into the scholars program I then heard about the practicum project. I thought of no better place to spend my time than at the hospital with Chris. My case was special for finding a supervisor and it differs for different fields. When it comes to medicine it is more about who you know but, it is very easy to find someone in healthcare that will have you around to watch, they love students that are willing to learn from them. You can shadow at any hospital you want because the medical field is very vast in what it has to offer.
I was not able to perform many tasks on the site because I am not a trained medical professional and I was in Shock Trauma. I did get to hold a trash bag open while a guy's bloody clothes were dumped in them but mostly got to interact with patients. I also got to be involved in some scenarios in the air force lab being a fake security guard and almost getting crushed by a giant air force guy pretending to faint. The coolest thing I got to do was see a guy get brought in on a helicopter on the helipad and then get to walk around on it. Just in the very limited time I spent there I got a lot of cool stories to tell about what I saw. A lot of my learning came from what I saw.
I learned a lot of different things in the realm of patient care so much so that it would be very tedious to write each down. I got to spend my time in the Trauma Resuscitation Unit, the Post Anesthesia Care Unit, the air force simulation lab and the Neuro ICU. In respective order I saw almost every injury you could think of, patients being monitored for pain upon departure, military field hospital scenarios and how brain injuries are treated. I think the most valuable thing I learned is that it is completely unpredictable what a nurse may see in a day and what treatments they will need to perform. I saw so many scenarios I lost count. You could get anything from the elderly falling, a workplace accident or a gunshot wound, really anything you could imagine. No matter what a nurse sees, the objective is always the same, get the patient back into the world.
Having been through this experience I am beyond excited to get into healthcare, especially a high intensity version. Before I started my first day at the TRU Chris Wentker told me that in a hospital you see people on their worst days and he was not joking, I saw a lot of people going through that. Ever since I was kid I have wanted to help people in that kind of setting and getting to see it and to actually feel excited about getting to do it myself one day really makes me happy to know that my career is going to be something I truly enjoy. I am glad to begin Nursing School this coming semester and can not wait for the journey ahead.