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From Freezing to Focused: Lessons Learned During My First Code Blue

     During my first year of nursing school, I had my first night clinical shift in the Medicine ward . That’s when I saw CPR being performed on a patient for the first time. We had learned about CPR in theory, but not in enough detail to actively participate in such a high-stress resuscitation. So, all I could do was stand in the doorway, watching as nurses rushed to push medications, doctors performed compressions, and visitors cried in the background.      I was frozen—not just because I didn’t know what to do, but because the reality of chest compressions was far more intense than what I had practiced on a mannequin. The sheer force used shocked me. It was nothing like the controlled, step-by-step technique we were taught in class.      Despite the resuscitation team’s best efforts, the patient didn’t make it. It was a sobering lesson: no matter how well you memorize the checklists or ace the theoretical knowledge, a real Code Blue is so...
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From Novice to Nurse: Surviving the First Year (Didn’t Know Whether to Laugh or Cry) 1

Even before I officially got my nursing license, I had my first reality check. Walking past a hospital one day, I saw its sign: ***** ENT HOSPITAL. Instead of recognizing ENT as ear, nose, and throat , my brain short-circuited and read it as ‘ent’ (rhyming with ‘yent’), like it was some mysterious, oddly named facility. My friend burst out laughing, and my dad—who had been proudly thinking his daughter was now a capable nurse—shook his head and asked, ‘Did you really pass nursing school?’ In that moment, I wasn’t so sure myself. Fast forward a few months, and I was officially a registered nurse, proudly holding a nursing license under my name. Eager to start my career, I applied for nursing jobs and got selected for interviews. That’s when I realized that nursing school had prepared me for patient care—but not for the oddities of job hunting. The first hospital interview was... an experience. The initial part went smoothly (minus the fact that I was interviewed in a doctor’s OPD in be...
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