so close I can taste it

So my instructor keeps talking about this imaginary nursing student who's in her final quarter of school but absolutly terrified of being found out as a fraud. Funny thing is that this woman bears a remarkable resemblance to me!


Now, my instructor knows (or thinks she does) that we all feel unprepared for the vast responsibility we are about to take upon ourselves, and it's good to know that I'm not the first one but I still look around sometimes and ask, "Did you mean me?" when the RN says, "Can you give the guy in 31 his pain meds?" or "What do you think we should do next"... Hello!! Don't you know who I am? I'm just Jennifer. I'm a glorified lifeguard for goodness sake!

Of course there are those days...and they're coming more frequently all the time... when I say, "Of course I can, do you want me to do the discharge teaching and redress his surgical site while I'm at it?" and I have a perfectly coherent answer about what we should do next for each patient and not only the one in front of us.

I have a little less than a month left in my nursing school career and I'm ready to be out there doing the work that I love. During my preceptorship it's been a wonderful experience to go from a scared little nursing student with my preceptor following me as I cared for two patients to a more confident student Nurse with four patients who was chasing my preceptor down only when I need meds signed off .