Baby Nurses

My nickname in a couple of circles is Mommanurse. I am called this not because I care for new Mommas, or their babies, but because I have, for a majority of my career, taught the new nurses coming straight from school into their first work experience. I take them from "how it's suppose to be", to "How it really is" It is quite the culture shock for them. They are so regimented during school that things must be absolutely perfect, that they have the toughest time with understanding that it NEVER is, and how to work around that and still be safe. Sometimes, I am responsible for nurses who are still in school, but doing a sort of residency called preceptorship, and it is even worse, because they are still in the middle of their brainwashing. Scared to death, afraid they will break the school rules, the hospital rules, or their preceptor's personal rules, everything they do is done with trepidation and 50 questions. It's the ones who DON'T ask questions that we worry about. They are dangerous.
It is very time consuming to teach these babies. It takes four times as long to do things than it would if I just did it myself, but they won't learn if I do that. I sit on my hands and watch, and try not to guide them too much in front of the patient and/or family member. They already feel inadequate enough, without being lectured in front of the people who need to be able to feel trust in their competency. So, before we ever go into the room, there is a verbal runthrough of what we are going to do and when. By the time we get to the room, my babies have forgotten everything we said, and spend the whole time they are accomplishing their tasks, looking up at me with that question on their faces, looking for my slight nod that they won't kill the patient if they proceed. I have promised them that I won't let them, and they hope they can count on that promise.
But, it is very rewarding to teach them. If I do it right, there will be competent, caring people out there in my work force, and the older I get, it wouldn't be impossible for me to be training the very people who will care for me when I need it. My reward comes from the look that comes on their faces when understanding strikes, or something I say makes sense, or I show them an easier way to do something that is just as correct as the way they were taught in school. Nursing schools are really big on a thing called "critical thinking". For the rest of us, this is called "troubleshooting" and mostly takes common sense. The first thing I try to tell my babies is that the most important thing for them to know is that something is wrong. They don't necessarily need to know WHAT is wrong, just that something is, and be able to describe it to a doctor or their charge nurse.
One of the other rewarding things is that I always learn something in the process. They will always ask me a question that I don't know the answer to, so we go look for the answer together.
The best thing I hear quite often is that they learned more from me than they learned the whole time in school. It's not true, I just taught them how to apply what they did learn in school in a way that makes sense, so I get the credit.
They are frequently amazed at how much I can pop off the top of my head, and feel bad because they feel like they will never get to where I am. What I tell them, and it's true.....you show a monkey something often enough, it will learn it.
So, maybe I shouldn't call them baby nurses, but baby monkeys. They might not appreciate that, tho.
I can't imagine doing anything else.