Perfection Does Not Exist

Lesson #2: "Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we learn." ~Shauna Painter

I have not mastered this lesson and I have a pretty good inkling it may take me quite some time to do so, but regardless, this lesson deserves a spot at the top.

A clinical instructor once told me that I needed to work on my need for perfection, because perfection does not exist.  

Everyone remembers a time when they had to walk into their patients room, with their instructor and perform either a skill, or an assessment.  It's a pretty stressful experience.  You've got your patient laying in the bed and all you can do is hope they are cooperative while your instructor stands behind her clipboard and watches your every move from the corner of the room. I was more focused on making sure I didn't miss something on the checklist than I was actually caring for my patient.  Mostly,  I got nervous because I didn't want to mess anything up. 

I can recall starting IVs at my kitchen table on all of my friends and being successful on every single one.  However, as it would happen, the day I went to start one on my patient, I had 3 failed attempts before the nurse had to do it.  (she got it on the first try).  I was bummed out for the rest of the day, knowing that I had been successful many times before, but buckled under the pressure of trying so hard to get it right.

I learned very quickly the importance of clamping a G-tube in-between medication administration.  Not because I naturally knew to do so, but because it only takes one patient, coughing one time, for you to realize that gastric content mixed with medication is capable of projecting 5 feet in the air and hitting the ceiling.

I also learned that it's always a great idea to turn off the pump when you're discontinuing an IV because when you come back into the room to take down the tubing and bags,  it's very likely there will be a gigantic puddle of normal saline on the floor. 

Each time an incident like this happened, all I could think about was what a failure I was going to be as a nurse.  I'd say things to myself like, "geez, you're an idiot.  Use some common sense." Or "how on earth are you ever going to make it when you don't have an instructor following you around making sure you're not destroying the place." 

The truth is, we are not going to be perfect and we are never going to know it all.  There will be times when we have to admit that we don't know the answer and there will be times we will need to be shown one more time how to do something...and that is okay.

 It does not mean that we are failing, it means that we are learning.