Original Podcast CLAIBORNE BUNCH

Claiborne Bunch is back with her friend Liz, a nursing student at the University of South Carolina. Liz chose USC because of its competitive nursing program and proximity to her family. She manages her workload by practicing time management and creating a weekly plan. Liz studies for exams by making study guides and doing practice questions. She chose to work in the NICU because she enjoys caring for patients and being compassionate. Liz advises nursing students to shadow different units to find their desired career path. Night shift is typically given to new nurses to help them get used to the workload. Despite the challenges, Liz maintains a social life and encourages others to do the same. She will be starting her job as a NICU nurse at MUSC in Charleston. Hey everyone, this is Claiborne Bunch, and today I am back with Elizabeth Smith, also known as Liz. Liz and I have been roommates for the past two-ish years at the University of South Carolina, where we have gotten to talk a lot and cover this topic many times. Liz is from Aiken, South Carolina, but originally was born in Trawson, South Carolina, where she will be moving back in July. Liz is an honors student majoring in nursing and has been working at Prisma, downtown Columbia, for a few years, figuring out what career paths she is wanting to take for the rest of her life. Liz has taken her first job offer at MUSC, downtown Trawson, South Carolina, where she will become a NICU nurse, and we will learn more about what that means over the course of this podcast. Keep listening to find out the details of what it takes to be a nursing student, tips and tricks, as well as taking your first few steps in becoming a nurse at your first adulthood job. Before we start, Liz, do I have your permission to record this conversation? Yes, you do. I'm excited to be here again. Well, I'm excited to have you again, and I just have a few questions that can help out other students that are coming to the University of South Carolina that want to be nursing students, too. So to start off, I just wanted to ask, how did you choose the University of South Carolina to be your college and the right place for you when you had all these other universities as an option? I chose USD because my whole family has always been Carolina fans, and we've grown up coming to games and just being Gamecock fans, so I knew from the start, being from Aiken just an hour away, that I wanted to come to USD. I explored some other places, but I just decided that USD was best for me because they had a really good nursing program, and I could be close to him and see my family. So what was different about, or did anything stand out to you about nursing at the University of South Carolina compared to other universities that you looked at? Yeah, their program is really competitive, and there's, I think it's like a 99% pass rate for the impact. So I definitely wanted to do it because of that, because they're just really in-depth with their classes. Yeah, that's awesome. I also went to the University of South Carolina because I was so close to home, and I know that that has a big impact on people's decisions when staying close to home, going to a university. But how was nursing, how did you know that nursing was meant for you? I've just always been kind of a people person, and I feel like with nursing, you have to be really compassionate and care for the patient. So when I first started doing my clinicals, I wanted to make sure that I was still liking it and not afraid of all the... The gross stuff? Yeah, the gross parts of it, and cared about doing all of that with the school. So that kind of solidified it for me. I know I said in the beginning that I hope that students coming to the University of South Carolina can listen to this and get some advice. So how do you, with your workload, how do you do that? I just think it's really important to time manage and kind of make a plan for the week. I'll try to sit down on a Sunday and write down what I have to do that week, and just so I know and don't get behind or too stressed out. Yeah, Liz does. I think you can get really stressed out, but there is a way to do other things and how to socialize, as well as being an authority and managing your time with nursing. How do you study for your exams? I usually like to go to the library, and what I'll do is I'll make a study guide from all of our notes, and then I'll compare it to our book and videos simplifying it online. I don't know why, but that just helps me put the information to memory. Then after that, I like to do practice questions, because I feel like the hardest thing with nursing questions is that they're tricky. A lot of information. Yeah, a lot of it is just like, or some of them aren't even about the information. It's just about prioritizing which patient's more important. This is so random. I just thought about this, but do you ever think about being a nurse and not knowing all the information when you're in the room with a patient? Yeah, I've experienced that during my clinicals. A patient will ask me, like, why am I getting this medication? And I'll be like, if you don't know, I'm going to have to ask the other nurse about that, because I just won't be familiar with the medication or what it does. You just get a mental block, especially because I'm doing NICU after college. I don't really learn a lot about that specifically. We do P's and we do OB, but we don't specifically learn about the premature. I think the main thing is whenever we're in orientation for new grads and in the hospital for that specific unit, just making sure that I'm trying to learn whenever they're teaching me everything. Speaking of the NICU, and congratulations on your new job, how did you know that you wanted to be in the NICU, and can you kind of explain what the NICU is? Because even being your friend and your roommate for a while, I'd still get confused on the difference between NICU, PICU, all those terms. So what exactly is the NICU? Yeah, so the NICU is the neonatal ICU. The difference is that that's going to be newborn babies, whereas the pediatric ICU is usually older kids or at least what I've heard, which is once they go home, they're dirty and they can't go back into the NICU. So even if they're three days old, they'd go to the PICU because the NICU is only for babies that haven't left the hospital. There's babies that sometimes end up in there for up to a year. That's sad. But once you go home, you go to the PICU. I know this will help other nursing students too. How did you start applying to jobs, and how did you know what exactly you wanted? Because I feel like there's so many options when it comes to nursing and not knowing what to do, and that's a very stressful part of your life, especially with graduating and then having to start adult life and have your first real job. Yeah, I think a lot of us have a lot of anxiety about what we wanted to do and how to apply for everything because no one really gives you a guide to how to handle all of that, and it can be really nerve-wracking, especially in your senior year. What if I don't get a job? What is my future going to look like? I felt like the most important thing for me was shadowing places that I thought I was going to be interested in. You do get to see some of that with clinical, but it's not always exactly what you would want to do, so I feel like the most important thing was shadowing and seeing, could I see myself here? It was interesting to see, no, this isn't for me, or yes, I left here and I really enjoyed my experience, but I feel like it was really important for me to do that, especially before accepting my job, because you want to see how a specific unit's culture is going to be and how the managers are, and I just feel like that's a big component, especially when you're accepting who you're working with. Yeah, like a big job. You want to be happy with all the different components of it, but I just feel like reaching out and shadowing, that also shows your interest just a further step. A lot of people, I feel like, don't really take that extra step, and putting your foot in those doors helps a lot and makes a lot of connections, because connections can go really far when finding jobs like that. Yeah. So my last question today is, is there a difference between day shift and night shift? Because I know as a new nurse going into a job, you're put on to night shift, so do people just not like being on night shift, or why are the younger people always put on night shift, not day shift? I think it's just, honestly, that it's hard on the body and that day shift is more preferred for people with families and stuff, because that's where it ends up. That's the top choice. The older nurses end up getting that, but also, what I've heard is night shift, there's so much extra time, so you can learn more or just get used to it, whereas during day shift, you're juggling families, doctors, procedures, and so it's just easier if you start on night, so you can kind of get used to everything. Yeah, and it's nice that you only have to work three nights or three days out of the week, so you get to enjoy your new time in Charleston, but thank you for meeting with me again. Yes, of course. Well, I really hope that this podcast can help future nursing students, especially those who are interested in the University of South Carolina, because knowing from experience having a roommate and a bunch of friends that are going through it here, it is a really good program, although it is competitive, and I'm hoping that some of these questions that were asked, especially people who are interested in the NICU or dealing with younger children at the hospital, even coming from Charleston, can feel less alone and just know that they're not going through it by themselves. I know nursing can be very tough and a lot of information, but Liz proves that you can have a social life, you can still have time for your friends and family and other things that you are interested in while going through school, and I really hope that Liz has a good time at MUSC in Charleston, and I cannot wait to be in Charleston with her and continue watching her do her thing that she was really excited to do.