Note: This post was written by a student at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University in fall 2021.
As I got through all the traffic of New Orleans, I saw the big blue and green sign, “Touro LCMC Heath”. The building didn’t really look like a hospital. It looked like all the other beautiful, historical buildings in New Orleans. It was 8 p.m. and probably around 40° outside. I parked in the parking garage and got out of the car in the frigid cold. I was slightly nervous but still excited to learn about what goes on in there. As I walked into the hospital, I was a little disappointed that the hospital wasn’t very much warmer than it was outside. I had been in there before, but I wasn’t familiar with everything in this huge hospital. The interior didn’t really look like a hospital either. There was a lot of wood and art on the walls, and it almost reminded me of a hotel. I walked to the elevators and moved up to the eighth floor. My excitement was getting the best of me, so I quickly composed myself in the elevator to appear more professional to Jas’s coworkers.
As I stepped out the elevator, I saw a waiting room and some double doors with a doorbell. I assumed that that’s where Jas was. I rang the doorbell and told a woman who had a sweet, soft voice that I was there to shadow Jasmine. She told me to wait a minute while she consulted with Jas and then came back on the speaker and told me to stand back so that the doors could open. As I walked through the doors, to my surprise the unit was even colder than the rest of the hospital. I walked down this hallway that had the most beautiful paintings on the walls. I recognized them, as they were paintings from a very well-known artist in New Orleans, Terrance Osborne. They were colorful paintings of houses in the city, perfectly placed throughout the walls. As I looked away from the paintings, I was greeted by a familiar face. “Hey Bitty,” Jas said to me with a huge smile on her face. I saw her in her dark blue scrubs surprisingly not tired for working the night shift. I gave her a hug. I quickly got distracted by the overlapping beeping of what I assumed to be machines in patients' rooms. Jas walked me around the small unit, showed me where the rooms are and where the nurse’s station was. The nurse’s station was a small, u-shaped area with small personal cubby workstations and one larger area with a monitor for the charge nurse. The nurse’s station was peculiar to me with a deep yellow color and white trim. One part of me assumed that all the areas of the hospital would be blue.
Jas works on the cardiovascular ICU at Touro. This is the floor of the hospital for patients who are right out of cardiac surgery or complications and are recovering. Jas told me with a smile on her face that she needed to do her rounds and there was a patient that she wanted me to meet. I followed her out of the nurse’s stations through the halls, into a patient’s room. “ROOM 809” is what the door read. As I walked into the room, the first thing I saw was all the city lights. I was so mesmerized. My gaze was interrupted by a voice. “That’s my favorite thing about this hospital,” said a very deep, but almost fragile voice. I turned around and saw an older man. His eyes were puffy almost as if he had been crying. As I was looking at this man, Jas was taking his blood pressure with an automatic cuff. I watched as it squeezed his arm and then released. I looked at Jas’s face as she saw the blood pressure and put it in the computer. “This is Mr. T, my favorite patient of all time,” Jas said as she looked at him with a smile. Mr. T and I chuckled. He was hugging a heart pillow and had so many red and white wires all over his chest. His chuckle made him start coughing and Jas’s face changed. She rubbed his back and was comforting him, knowing that the coughs caused him pain. Jas has always been a comforting person. As a teenager, she helped her mother take care of her grandmother when she fell sick. As a child, she never really wanted to be a nurse, but after seeing how much good care of patients helps them, she knew that nursing was her calling. After Mr. T stopped coughing, she gave him some pain medicine to help with his chest pain through his IV. She took the top off the medicine and inserted it into his IV and pushed the medicine through it. Mr. T winced but assured me he was alright after he saw my eyes widen. Jas and I told Mr. T goodnight and stepped out of his room. Jas took off her gloves and we both used hand sanitizer.
We walked back into the hallway and Jas sat in her small station. She got on her computer and started charting about Mr. T’s vitals, blood pressure and the medicine that she gave him. As I was watching her, I heard some commotion and I turned around to see a patient on a hospital bed being rolled into a room. Another nurse in the same color scrubs came to Jas. “We need you to do the admit babe,” she said with a smile to Jas. Jas smiled and stood up, put her computer on a stand and rolled her stand into the room. She signaled for me to follow her. Jas introduced herself and me with a sweet soft voice and asked if it was alright if I observed their admit onto the floor. The patient was in a lot of pain and really couldn’t answer. Jas and the other nurse in the room decided that I should probably go sit with one of the other nurses in the nurses’ station. I sat with a nurse whose name was Ms. Tammy and she was so sweet to me. She told me that she’s never worked with a nurse as young but also so experienced like Jas. Jas started working at this hospital 2 years ago. She loves her job, but her real passion is working with women’s health. Jas had a baby in her first year of nursing school and got through and graduated with wonderful grades. She wants nothing more than to help mothers during their pregnancy journey, but she is content where she is right now. As I looked back up through the glass door, I saw Jas so concentrated on getting all the information from her new patient. She then took her vitals, got the patient the heart pillow they give to all patients on their floor, and then told the patient's husband something. She walked out of the room, she took her gloves off and used hand sanitizer. I sat next to Jas again and watched her type on her computer again. Before I knew it, it was time to go. I gave Jas a hug and thanked her so much for the opportunity.
I walked back through those double doors and into the elevator, back out the door and into my car. As I got into my car, I thought about my day and realized something. Just because you aren’t in the exact job that you dream of, you can still be happy. I firmly believe that Jas will follow her vocation in women’s health, but it brings me so much hope to know that even though she’s not in women’s health, she is still so content at her job and with the people she works with. Jas has such an ease to do her job and a passion for doing her job well and that is such an admirable trait. By observing her, I could really tell that she loves what she does and loves the patients that she works with.
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