Bergen Johnson, NUR ’24, Raleigh, NC
This summer, I had the opportunity to work as a Student Nurse Extern at NYU Langone in New York City. For nine weeks, I shadowed a nurse on NYU’s postpartum unit, helping to care for mothers and their newborns. After giving birth, mothers must be monitored for at least 24 hours alongside their infants before they are able to be discharged; however, several patients stay longer, whether that be to recover from a C-section or to treat jaundiced newborns. Thus, nurses on this unit have a unique task not often seen on other floors: simultaneously care for adults and infants.
On the days that I worked, I would try to be on the unit a little before 7:00am so that I could see the patient assignment and familiarize myself with the patients’ charts before receiving report from the night nurses. My nurse and I would then go into the patients’ rooms and introduce ourselves, then perform quick assessments for both mom and baby: a vital aspect of a postpartum assessment is the fundal check, which is essentially palpating the abdomen to ensure that the uterus is contracting and returning to its normal position after birth. If the uterus does not contract, it could cause hemorrhaging and an obstetric emergency. Newborns require assessment of their reflexes, most of which disappear after the first few months to year of life. Such reflexes include the sucking reflex and the Moro, or startle, reflex. At this time, I would also take vital signs for mom and baby. After assessing our patients, my nurse and I would return to the nurses’ station and I would document our assessment findings, then work on sketching out a rough schedule for the rest of the shift. By organizing my day into hourly checklists, I was able to stay on top of my tasks and help remind my nurse when it was time for duties that I couldn’t do, such as administer pain medications. At around 6:30pm, I would try to start to prepare for change of shift; this included ensuring my documentation was up to date, no vital signs or medications were due, and the patients were all content. At 7:00pm, it was time to give report to the oncoming night nurses, a responsibility which my nurse passed on to me several weeks into my externship; being trusted to be the one to determine which information was necessary for the night nurses to know as they started their shifts made me feel extremely proud about my professional growth during the summer.
I feel incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to not only help care for a population that I am passionate about, but that I was able to learn from an amazing nurse. I am confident that my externship helped me improve not only my clinical skills, but also my ability to work collaboratively with nurses and to communicate with other healthcare professionals. Lastly, I greatly appreciate the financial assistance given by Penn Career Services so that I could pursue this experience.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2023 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
