Um... I don't know what an EKG is.

The good thing about writing about my beginnings in the nursing field more than 2 years after the fact is that I really can see how far I've come.  Case in point: when I started working in the hospital, my experiences in the medical field included several emergency room visits and one overnight stay as a kid, and sleeping in a chair at my grandmother's bedside the night before she died.  I guess my personality sold me to the nurse manager when she hired me on as a part time unit clerk, because it certainly wasn't my medical expertise!

So on my first day of "computer training" we were given a page of pretend doctor's orders to enter into the computerized ordering system for practice.  Now, on a side note, these were nothing like real doctor's orders.  They were neatly typed (not scrawled illegibly), they were distinctly sorted into lab tests, radiology, dietary, etc (not BMP, CBC am, CXR am, advance diet to full liquids, troponin q8h x3, CT of abdomen stat).  So, anyway, I'm pretty computer literate, so I'm doing okay, finding the tests in the computer, ordering them and checking them off.  It's pretty easy to figure out, X-rays come from radiology, blood tests from the lab, and food from dietary, so I'm doing okay.  Except for the EKG.  I have no idea what an EKG is, or where it should be ordered from.  But I'm sitting in a computer lab with about 15 people, and no one else is asking stupid questions like "What is an EKG again?"  So the instructor comes over to check on me:

Her:"Looking pretty good... Oh, look you missed the EKG!"

Me: "Right, okay..."

Her: "Let me see you put that one in!"

Me: "Right, so I would... Um... I don't know what an EKG is."

Her: (stares at me dumbfounded) "Cardiology services?"

Me: "Oh, right, yeah I knew that!"

Fast foreword 2 years.  I got the unit clerk thing figured out, and moved on to working as a patient care technician.  I'm doing EKG's now, drawing blood, suctioning, and lots more things that probably don't need mentioning if you want to keep your lunch down.  We received a patient from the cath lab, complaining of a headache.  The resident happened to be there, so the RN asks her for an order and heads into the room to check on her patient.  I'm sitting at the desk putting together the patient's chart while the resident thinks out loud to herself.

Her: "Well she's allergic to tylenol, says she takes excedrine at home, but I probably shouldn't give her that because of the caffeine..."

Me (muttering to myself): "Yeah, plus it has tylenol in it..."

Her: "Yeah.  Oh well, I guess I'll just order a whole lot of aspirin..."

Me (still not looking at the resident, because I don't want her to think I'm telling her what to do): "Really?  Aspirin?  When she's already got all that plavix onboard from pre-procedure, she's got integrelin hanging, and she just had a large hole cut in her femoral vein?  Aspirin?"

I don't know what she ordered, but it wasn't aspirin.