Dear mouse,
I am awake again since 1:00 am. I tried to read the novel of a writer whose resume tells the readers that she heads a department that makes her an authority on the topic. When I read how she misspelled Heimlich Manuever which is not even a typographical error, I doubted the authorship of the book. And demonstrating this first-aid for choking is not done on real people but to mannequins and other training devices so there is no room for sexual arousal between the trainor and the trainee. I took the course together with CPR. It does not mean Carlos P. Romulo, honey. That is Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. HELLO.. So I dropped the book but I could not go back to sleep. My system is already geared to reading…anything.
I bloghopped and again I was pissed after reading a business advice from a mom blogger who thinks that selling cosmetics is already categorized as business…don’t know, for me it only falls on one aspect of business…marketing. then she enumerated all the “busineses that she was engaged in which none of them generated decent income. And she was encouraging moms to go to business just to be able to blog about making money. Hay buhay.
Then I read this blog from inquirer which listed as number one advice…Go into business involving your expertise to which I agree.
When I put up that school for nursing assistants, many doubted my capability. Me, included. Although I had experience in the Philippines of putting up a nursery and kindergarten school for a client and had helped my boss in setting up satellite MBA programs, I admit that I know nothing about this business venture except that i was working in a nursing registry at that time and I saw the opportunity of going backward integration since there is a problem of sourcing nursing assistants. Besides, this is USA and the agencies are really strict when it comes to implementation of projects that are human services oriented.
This is the time when my advice of learning the trade is applicable but i did not say it is easy and i did not say that it is cheap.
First, my friends and I had a meeting with an instructor of a school in the same field. It turned out that she was more interested in selling us an expensive vacuum cleaner. *heh*
The decision was reached that I enroll in the course. Anyway, it was only good for two months and my friends who were relatives of the owner of the registry where I was working would allow me to work half day only. Great. That was the only way, I can get the syllabi, the instructional materials and the hospital apprenticeship programs.
Yes, the theory aspects were easy. I always aced the tests. Ahem. The instructor looked at me with suspicion. My classmates became friendlier to me. They were not actually uneducated. They were changing careers.
What I did not expect was that the course was more on hands on…that was we will be working in skilled facilities with actual patients. I remember my phobia about hospitals because of my and loved ones’ near death experiences.
Besides, the reason why I did not take up Nursing (two of my sisters are nurses) was because I could not stand blood, sputum and other body fluids and dead people.ARGH.
But I was already enrolled. I had paid the tuition fee. Putting up the school was also an opportunity for me. I was promised of managing it as well as the petition for the green card. I still have many years left for my working visa so by that time, it is operational, I can work on my papers.
First day in the hospital setting, I froze in the lobby. Great. It took my classmates’ urging to make me walk inside.
It’s all in the mind. A classmate who was into that kind of job but needs to state licensed helped me a lot when it came to practice. I helped her in the theoritical aspects.
But one old woman changed my attitude towards this profession. Our instructor said no one could make her go out from the bathroom. Not even the hospital’s own nurses. It was affecting the schedules. They had time frame to work on…like…putting all ambulant patients in the dining rooms before the trays are collected… for the disable… they were served in their beds…the beds had to be made while the patients were dining. Etc, etc, etc.
I volunteered to get her out…not bodily but thru persuasion . She had the dementia. She was looking for her daughter. The nurse told me that she had no more living relative. The nurse assigned to her was impatient.
I held her hands, talked to her, promised her that her daughter is coming so she should prepare…should eat, should change the hospital gown…I was lying…I was waiting for the lightning to strike me. There was none. She obeyed me like a lamb. The nurse seated her in the wheelchair and rolled her in to the dining room.
The instructor took note of it, so instead of assigning me to “dirtier jobs” he asked me to attend to some confused, demented patients.
Before I finished the course, I heard that the old lady died. I dreamed about her smiling and waving at me. I felt sad.
I passed the licensing exam, almost flunked it…yeah that’s the truth…the examiners would test you the skills that you should have acquired from the course…like taking vital signs…they would see if you know how by doing it simulataneously with the examinee. If you counted pulse rates of 70 when it is only 50…you fail. I almost failed in demonstrating how to transfer patients from the bed to wheelchair.mamatay daw ang patiente. bwahaha. But the exams are of two types…the theory and the practice. so pasa pa rin.
After the course, I started preparing the business plan. It was a requirement by the agency to submit the course outline,syllabus and faculty profile. The syllabus and the course outline should have been reviewed by nurse practitioners. I made use of the materials I gathered from the school. I was doing it after my work. It was not stealing the trade secret. There was no trade secret to talk about. Besides, it was not a competitor since the project site was several miles away. Had I not been in the academe, I would not be able to come up with the curriculum.
The Nursing manager in the hospice and private duty deparment of the registry attempted to give me assignments whenever they could not find an available nursing assistant. She knew that I was licensed but i was more in the human resources recruitment…attending to nurses-applicants for on-call assigments. I found that experience useful when I helped put up our own nursing registry. My friends who would bankroll the business were teasing me. We did not tell others, the reason why I took the course.
There came an opportunity that we wanted her to review the curricular program that I prepared. One condition…I had to be assigned to a German lady as temporary private duty because the regular called in sick. The old lady was not sick. She just have to have a companion in her apartment to see to it that she’s safe when she took a bath and moved around. No she did not need assistance. She was still strong.
The language barrier taught me another lesson. Ask, if you did not understand. She was old that she referred to the fridge as icebox so when she instructed me to take an orange juice for myself from the icebox, I looked for an ice box. Hahahaha. Then she was looking for her pants before she went inside the bathroom. I was pointing to her the the pants that she was wearing. She meant underwear.hahaha
She was my last “victim” of my nursing skills except that I found them useful when I took care of my father-in-law and helped the nurses made my mom comfortable in her last few days.
We presented the business plan to the agency for approval and implementation. One thing that I learned from this exercise was when these people realize that you have the business know-how and you know what you are going into… they also offer consultations for free to see to it that the project is put into operation .
It took eight months before the school became fully operational. During this time, the financiers were paying rent to the location which had to be renovated according to the agency specifications. By that time, I already found another job so that I just worked as consultant. Then came the nursing registry business. I believed I had already the expertise.
The Ca t
