At least now I know what I do NOT want to do

Yesterday at clinical I was "in charge", which means that I followed around the charge nurse on the floor. I was on the neuro floor along with three other FHU nursing students, but they all had patients. All semester I've been working on the cardiac telemetry step-down floor, and the charge nurse on that floor doesn't take on a patient load, so her job is strictly to be available for charge nurse duties and helping others. I thought that I would enjoy being a charge nurse after observing her during my 5 weeks there. Well, things are a little different on the neuro floor. The charge nurse also takes on a full patient load. Wow. I was glad that I was there to help since the hospital's charting system just went electronic. Not only was she dealing with her own patients (one of which was in very serious condition in the morning - we thought we were going to have to code him), she also had people coming to her wanting thier problems fixed. I spent the day watching the charge nurse try to figure out electronic charting, chasing her from one end of the floor to the other, cleaning up a patient's diarrhea - twice, making tomato soup, and watching a patient to make sure that she swallowed her medicine since she was notorious for holding it in her mouth until the nurse left, then spitting it out. These were all time consuming things that had to be done, but that the poor charge nurse really had no time to do. Needless to say, I doubt that I will ever willingly take on such a position! I also gained a tremendous amount of respect for my future charge nurses.

As for the job - still no word. I know they told me that it will definitely be after April 8, and will most likely be more toward the middle of the month before I hear, but the suspense is driving me crazy!