Half way!

I'm half way though my first adventure.  This is a small town alright and it takes some getting used to.  No Starbucks & no sushi which are the main staples in my diet back home.  I haven't eaten out yet hence have never cooked so much for myself in all my life.  There have been some frozen pizzas in the mix, not going to lie.  It takes a lot of work and planning when take-out isn't an option.  The liquor store is enormous so there have been a few merlot Monday's. 

I sure stick out like a sore thumb.  On my first day here I was in the grocery store and an older man started talking to me.  He asked if I was the new obstetric nurse in town.  Huh?  He is the town OB/GYN.  I was at a canoe regatta and someone came up to me asking the same thing.  When I'm at work patients ask too.  It could be my lack of accent or the fact I'm always looking for something that gives me away but they always ask where I'm from.  I met a couple that spent 6 years living at 4th and Lonsdale.  Wait, what?!  This is such a small world.

                                                  
The staff I work with are just amazing.  So much so that I am thinking of coming back for another month mid September.  They are hard working, resilient and very welcoming.  I'm THE obstetric nurse so when there are two women in labour, I'm IT.  There are a lot of foreign trained doctors that  look to me for advice and more often than not I'm happy to give it. It's daunting to think I'M the expert in the room.  Yikes.

The paperwork and charting is my biggest obstacle.  It's a challenge for me not to try and reinvent the wheel.    Their system is insanely inefficient, taking me up to an hour to complete a chart after a delivery. That can't be right.  It's hard for me to bite my tongue and not criticize.  It's not my job here. The unit clerks who are being vastly underutilized don't enter any orders, the nurses do.  The nurses write out all their own MAR's then need another RN to co-sign.  Nurses mix up all our own medications.  We need to call the lab in from home on the weekend.  It's back to basics.  I don't have access to their computer system because they didn't want to train me as I'm only here for a month so I'm dependent on other RN's to enter my work and check my lab results.  For those of you that work with me and know how neurotic and methodical I am, you can appreciate how frustrating this is for me.  It's all part of the learning curve and letting go on this big adventure.  It's something I need to work on. 

Clinically I am learning a lot.  I've learned a few tricks already which I'm excited to use at some point.  There are no epidurals, no elective caesarian sections.  Women in labour get triaged in the emergency room and only come to me in active labour.  They frequently are told to go labour at home and then come back.  Love it!

I'm still struggling with the accent.  I'm learning people from Black Tickle (!) have some of the thickest.  I'm not sure what people from Dildo (ahem) sound like yet. 

• Purr = pure
• mudder/faddur = mother/father
• tree = three
• hempt = empty
• ayEE boie or nayEE boie = not sure yet but they add it to the end of most sentences