—By Julia Cheesman, Senior—
I want to begin by explaining the setup of MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital, also known as unit G9. The unit is set up into 3 pods. The first pod is the Oceans, and is composed of “liquid” cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma. The second pod is the Mountains and focuses on the “stone” cancers or cancers caused by tumors such as osteosarcoma, neuroblastoma, etc. Lastly, the Rainforest is the pediatric ICU. Each pod has a bell that patients ring when they have finished their last round of chemo or successfully completed a stem cell transplant otherwise known as becoming a survivor. Now that you have a mental picture of the physical set-up, I will briefly describe two days that I have spent at the hospital.
The first day I completed a full 12-hour shift on G9 I shadowed Salina a patient care partner (PCP), which is MD Anderson’s term for a certified nursing assistant. MD Anderson uses the title PCP because it demonstrates that nurses and nurse assistants are truly partners when it comes to patient care, and that they should be treated equally. Along with taking vital signs and performing basic skills I was also able to interact with patients for the first time, which is the most rewarding part of my job thus far.
On my second full day working in the hospital, I shadowed a second PCP whose name is Vicky. I was given more responsibility and allowed to take vitals and document them on my own. We were on the “Oceans” side of the floor, which is a kid friendly way of explaining that the unit was focused on “liquid” cancers including leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Many of the children are on some form of isolation secondary to their compromised immune systems; thus, it was important that I practiced time management and organizational skills to ensure that I documented vitals accurately and efficiently. However, when children became agitated or were in pain, efficiently taking vital signs became more difficult. As the day progressed, I began to learn how to effectively interact with each individual patient and learn their preferences. This may seem like a basic skill; however, understanding how different each patient is and how important it is to make the child as comfortable as possible is something that I found very important. For example, I was having trouble having a 5-year old patient concentrate on keeping the pulse ox on his finger and the thermometer under his tongue. In order to make the process more interesting to him I worked to make the pulse ox a game and allowed him to shoot the thermometer cover off into the trash can. I learned that working as a pediatric nurse is not all vital signs and medication administration, but also a combination of selfies, superheroes and video games.