dark alley

The corner I turned just led me into another dark alley, something that seems to be happening a lot lately. Like pretty much since this fall. It makes me question what I'm doing in nursing school? What am I going to do with my life? Can I get a job and health insurance before my divorce is finalized? Because the idea of being without health insurance in my forties could, in itself, push me into a breakdown and how would I ever afford that, you know, without health insurance? So another Sunday creeps up on me, sticking it's tongue out at me from the moment I raised my blind to find snow falling. Another test that I'm studying for. And every Sunday my belly is filled with this acidic stomach churning panic of a new round of clinicals to face for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. How am I ever going to work in a hospital if this is what 'play work' at the hospital does to me? Five more weeks of critical care to go. Our instructor talked to us about workarounds at post conference (the end of clinicals) last week and asked about workarounds we have we noticed. And why is it I see, not workarounds, but outright errors, lies, stuff that makes me thank God for my kick ass physical health and hope that I never have to spend time as a patient in a hospital. I can't say that I entirely blame the nurses I see doing these mistakes, although I see some things, and as a student I am in a position of no power, that make me feel very uncomfortable. Like come home and bawl uncomfortable. The hospital healthcare system doesn't work. Neither for the patients or the employees of the system. And I want to hop up and down and point it out and try to make a difference. But my instructor, the very first week she met with me after clinicals said, 'You are a very kind person but you have this attitude like you want to save the world.' She didn't see it as a good thing. More as something that was going to make me depressed and cause me get burnt out early and she was sort of like 'you have to accept that you can't make changes in that way.' But I don't think it takes genius, the biggest impact can be made with simple stuff. And the biggest thing I see, that leads to the most problems, is the lack of time. Being rushed to multitask to the point of mistakes and decreased productivity and getting a sort of tunnel vision so you can't even see the patient in front of you for the person they are and not just what's on their medical chart (which is on a computer, which just makes me think that Paris, Texas is one of the most prescient films about technology and isolation). Ugh. Guess, I'll hop off my soapbox of despair and get back to studying.