Starting Over

The sun rises slowly. Here it's 0700h and it hasn't reached the creek yet. I love the bright harvested field and the promise of a clear, sunny (though cold -2C) day.

Yesterday I began my nursing refresher course. They now call it re-entry to practice. I have spent six months gathering my paperwork to qualify. I was lucky they didn't expect me to start over after my 12 years away.


Our first lesson (of course) was the Nursing Process. This is the framework in which we make our nursing decisions. I was a bit worried that it would be as boring as when I was 21 and first transplanted to Calgary and the traditions of a proud hospital training nursing school.


I am different. The text is different. Even the approach is different. There is so much more respect for the individual ideas and experience of the nurse and the client (patient). They have placed it within the structure of critical thinking. Yay! I like this stuff. I love sociology and psychology and philosophy. How different these processes seem now that I have read the Greek classics, raised two children and passed the 40-year mark.


I must say that knitting fits beautifully within the framework of critical thinking. Decision making, using language to explore ideas and reflecting on successes and failures is what this blogland is all about. What encouragement to a writer and journaller to hear that I am to keep a nursing journal of how I felt about the situations, what worked and what could be done better. As well, my love of research will be embraced.


I know I didn't always find this keenness accepted on the ward. I realize now that there were many bullies on the nursing floor. But I'm bigger than most of them. I have learned to support my children to triumph over bullies and I can do it now too. If I want to do thorough foot care, I don't care if it makes you look bad. If I want to chart at great depth, it is for my patient's good and my own personal and professional aims.


The text also encourages the sisterhood among nurses that I never got at home because I was so wrapped up in being a new wife and mother. I look forward to some new friends who will understand the situations and the confidentiality. My best friend from nursing moved from Yellowknife to north of Adelaide. Sigh. There's always email.

I finished the first square of the aran afghan. Dragonskin is appropriate for a young man. I bound off and I'll probably pick up and knit seed stitch borders. I like this enough to perhaps use it as ever-other square. But it is not TV knitting. I wasn't about to give up the English countryside in Wives and Daughters to keep the overlapping stitches on track. I do better with a running pattern. I still wanted this to be a block a month, but I am wary of placing such barriers on my time. Perhaps it's a block as I wish project.

The Nursing course is self directed, so I really need to focus my discipline on keeping on track. If i finish a little early, I could have the summer off. Hmmm. Another start.