It’s just like this: If I wipe the dirty cupboard and then there is still a crumb emblazoned there, then it’s okay to say: Mei, not so bad. However, if I turn the three-way stopcock 90 degrees to the left and not 90 degrees to the right while taking the arterial blood sample, then the patient can bleed to death. A little twist in the wrong direction – and the misfortune takes its course. I make sure to make it clear to trainees on our ward what importance and scope lies behind our work. At the latest, when the young people have understood the fatal effects the smallest wrong move could have, then they are eager to do a really good job.
With us on the ward there are usually two to three trainees at the end of their second or third year of training for two weeks, sometimes three or four weeks. Then we have no one for two to three months before the next small group comes. By the way: The proportion of carers is increasing. Ten years ago, during my apprenticeship, we were 20 women and five men, so one fifth of us were men. Today I would estimate the proportion of men to be a quarter.
If a trainee is on intensive duty, he is assigned to one of us nurses – so nobody walks up and down the hospital corridors unsupervised looking after patients. Of course, apprentices can take on tasks independently, actually quite a range, for example changing bandages, taking arterial blood samples, documenting vital signs or performing blood gas analyzes. But before they do any work on the patient alone, one of our experienced nurses has shown them beforehand. And the first time they do the work under our supervision. Nothing happens there.
On the other hand, one thing happens: it makes gossip! – and the trainee is on the floor. Just tipped over. This often happens the first time they are present for a resuscitation or when there is a lot of blood involved, for example because the patient is vomiting blood or when a chest tube is inserted into the chest area. That didn’t happen to me myself during my apprenticeship. But it’s not like I was never close to it. Fortunately, I only managed to leave the room on time each time.
When the trainees’ time in the intensive care unit is over, one sentence comes up quite often: “I learned the most from you.” I’m happy about that, because that’s exactly what I said myself when I was a trainee – that’s why it quickly became clear to me at the time that I wanted to work as a trained nurse in intensive care.
Julia Rettenberger is an intensive care nurse. In this column, the 27-year-old tells every week about her work at the district clinic in Ebersberg. The collected texts can be found under sueddeutsche.de/thema/Auf_Station.
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