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Sent by God

Today was a crazy day.

It started out like the usual nursing clinical days and I was prepared to care for my patient. I was to administer medications for the first time so I made sure I had all the info about the meds and what I had to do.

We have team leaders each clinical day. The students switch off being leaders and the leader’s job is to check on the students and make sure we’re doing our vitals, rounds, glucose checks, health assessments, documenting, etc. The team leader for today was this student that I’ve been very impatient with ever since the beginning of the semester. He came to check on me every 30 minutes and kept on asking me to do the things I wasn’t even supposed to do. He would watch me do every procedure and told me to fix this and that. He was getting on my nerves and I was not happy with him the whole day. 

Our nursing instructor got in a fight with the nurse at the Rehab. Apparently there was a misunderstanding of which students were giving meds today and the nurse ended up missing a dose for her patient. She went berserk and called the doctor, saying it wasn’t her fault. The patient was okay and everything turned out to be fine but it was just a huge mess.

The police also came to the Rehab today. A patient wanted to leave the facility and he kept saying he needed to go home to take care of things. He wanted to talk to certain people but they were dead long time ago. We obviously didn’t know what to do and it was almost time to go so the nurses cleared us out of the floor. 

In the midst of all those craziness, all those annoyances and all that stress, God blessed me today. Amazing.

I was on the computer getting my patient’s information when an alarm went off. Each patient has a call button in the room that he or she can press whenever help is needed. As nursing students, we’re supposed to help if no other nurse is around.

The room was right next to where I was and no one was around at the moment. So I went in and helped the patient get in her bed. Right before I left the room, I asked her if she needed anything else and she paused for a moment. It looked like she wanted to say something but she just stared at my ID.

Finally, she started to speak with her voice cracking and tears flowing down her face. She saw that I was from Andrews University and she told me she was Adventist as well. She told me she’d been abandoned by her church and that she was struggling to make a living. She’d been trying to move into a senior apartment but packing was stressful and difficult to do on her own.

She asked me if Andrews had any missionaries or volunteers who helped the elderly move in. I sat down next to her and listened to everything she had to say. There was a lot going on in her life and she didn’t have a close family member or a friend to talk to. We talked for a little longer and I told her I’d try to find out about her moving situation. I was scared to ask but I carefully asked if I could pray for her. She openly let me so I held her hands tightly and prayed. 

I strongly believe God sent me to this patient to listen to her and to remind her that God is still there. She’s had a tough life and I don’t know how I would have survived if I was in her situation. 

I will never forget today’s experience. Isn’t this what nursing is all about anyway? Really caring for patients and showing the love that God has shown us? 

I think I love my job already.

_______

Eunbi Kim studies nursing at Andrews University.