As my Virginia Beach assignment comes to an end I want to focus on the wins of this assignment. After my second month I started having to work 50+ hours a week in order to keep up with my growing patient panel. This left me exhausted and looking forward to the end of my time here. I don’t regret coming here for the following reasons below.
Here are some of my Virginia wins:
-Nice catching up with old friends and making new ones.
-Interesting visiting Thomas Jefferson’s estate after reading his biography.
-Having my parents come to visit.
-A patient made me home baked chocolate chip cookies. This was a thank you for catching a breast mass on her (she hadn’t had a PCP in decades), which ended up being bilateral breast cancer (treatable). So she was grateful.
-Having ~60 days with no patients in the hospital
-Advocating for patients to be placed in long term care that couldn’t take care of themselves anymore or getting their families more involved (had dozens of these patients).
-Meeting grumpy patients and by the end of the visit they had a smile on their face and were very thankful.
-Identifying when it’s time for a patient to go on hospice (non-cancer related) and them passing away shortly after comfortably at home.
-Having patients and staff ask me if I was opening up my own practice so they could follow me there.
The biggest win of all was showing hundreds of elderly patients that a nurse practitioner is just as competent as the physician they are used to seeing.
Feel free to comment with some of your recent wins while on assignment below!
