Into The Workforce is a Poly Parcel series featuring Alumni of different professions, giving a glimpse into the real world working experience. This article features Abigail Tan, NYP Graduate, who has been working as a nurse for close to 9 years.
Working in the hospital definitely isn’t like how it’s portrayed in medical dramas. The hit series Grey’s Anatomy or even Channel 8’s drama ‘你也可以是天使 (You can be an angel too)’ are at times overly dramatized filled with action-packed or they can portray nursing as a bed of roses.
My day-to-day routine consists more of helping with the patient’s daily activities (eg. showering, feeding), serving medications, doing dressings and many more; We also have our own bouts of drama as well as complex and interesting patients.
To many people, I am ‘just a nurse’. It is a common response I get when I tell them about my job. However, they do not understand that nursing is not just about changing diapers and making milo for our patients!
School vs Real World
As nurses, we are trained in school to master skills that we can apply such as wound dressing, serving medication, etc. We have to go through several attachments in the hospital so that we practise our skills and prepare ourselves for when we eventually face real scenarios. These help us know what to expect when we work as full-fledged nurses.
Compared to the real working world, school is a much safer environment as there are always seniors and preceptors (teachers) that aid us during attachments. When I started to head out to work after graduation, a major difference was that I had to take charge and make decisions as a charge nurse—a nurse leader that oversees a specific department or unit.
The decisions that I would have to make are, for example, if my junior nurse informs me that a patient is running a high fever, what would I do? Or if a patient is having an emotional breakdown, how would I intervene? Making the right and best decision for my patients matters the most.
Working in Shifts
Shift work is almost a given for every nurse working in the ward. Sometimes, we work the PM to AM shift, also known as the PAPA shifts, and each shift lasts nine hours.
On other days, we might be called down to the hospital to burn the midnight oil by working the night shifts. Those shifts usually start at 9 PM and end at 7:30 AM.
Our schedule differs each week and it may be a combination and mixture of different shifts. We would only get our new roster nearing the end of the previous roster, so it can be challenging to make plans ahead of time.
There are times when the shift work disrupts my sleep cycle but even though it may be a bad thing, one good thing is that I can have weekdays off and when I go out, it isn’t so crowded!
Having been a nurse for 9 years, I learnt that nursing will always be a learning journey even after graduation from school and having years of experience as a full-fledged nurse. Even as a senior staff nurse I need to be humble and willing to learn. One way I learn while working in the workforce is to ask questions whenever I have doubts. There is no wrong in asking questions, in fact, it cultivates an environment that encourages learning within the nursing team.
Learning to speak in dialect and other languages
Throughout my years as a nurse, I managed to brush up on my dialect by speaking with all the ‘Ah mas’ and ‘Ah gongs’ (Elderly folks)! As well as a little bit of Melayu from time to time. Even though my speaking isn’t the best, being able to communicate a little in their dialects and languages helped close the distance between me and the patient.
One such incident was when an elderly ah ma who spoke only dialect kept trying to climb out of bed. As a nurse, the first thought that came to my mind was “Ah! Ah-ma was trying to climb out of bed! The patient is non-compliant with fall precautions.” But when I attempted to communicate with her in her dialect “Ah ma le ai ke di gor?” (Ah ma where do you want to go?) I found that she wanted to go to the toilet.
Friendship at work
I am thankful that I have made a few good friends throughout my years in nursing. But, I also learned that not all colleagues are going to be my friends. As a fresh graduate, I admit I was a little bit naive. I had expected that since nursing is a career that represents compassion, people won’t be too nasty. But it turned out otherwise.
Just to clarify, not all of them are going to be nasty, there are genuinely good people in nursing and they can become your lifelong friends!
Personal issues aside, I think the most important thing when working together is to as a team to provide the best care for the patients safely and efficiently.
Throughout my years of nursing, I learned to communicate with my colleagues on what roles we would be taking for each shift. This helps us to work cohesively with each other and avoid mistakes at work. Each colleague will have their preferences and style of working so it is better to trash it out there and then, rather than keeping mum.
Is it all worth it?
I did not join nursing immediately after graduation. I took like a year off because I wanted to give myself the time to consider if it was what I really wanted. To me, going into nursing and being a full-fledged nurse was no joke. I had a lot of questions in my head like “Will I be able to cope with it? I will be dealing with lives! Real lives, not mannequins that we see in school!”
But one situation that really anchored my decision to return back to nursing was speaking to a nurse who was on her maternity leave. The way she spoke of her experiences and encounters as she took care of the patients really inspired and motivated me. It evoked some kind of emotions in me and made me want to not waste what I have learnt in school but instead, use it to care for people even though part of me still feared the unknown and had a lot of doubts.
Fast forward to the present, I am going into my 9th year as a nurse in a psychiatric unit. I can’t believe it if you ask me! Sometimes I think to myself, 9 years—that’s commitment!
I’ve learnt a lot from my seniors in the unit, be it medical or psychiatric skills. And as a nurse in the psychiatric unit, I had the chance to nurse patients in a holistic manner together with my colleagues by taking care of their physical and psychological health.
There were many patients that I have nursed throughout the years that were very memorable and each experience trained me to become a better and stronger nurse. Ultimately seeing them getting better is the main factor that motivates me and helps me understand why I do what I’m doing as a nurse.
If I could choose to be a nurse again, I think I would.
