Hello Nurses!

I am Susan Wessman, LVN, your host.

I graduated from San Jacinto Vocational Nursing Program in 2006.

Straight out of nursing school, I went to work at the Estelle Prison in Huntsville, TX; quite the culture shock to say the least! It was the best nursing decision I made. When you come out of the nursing program, you feel like you know a lot; well, you don’t! The nurses I worked with told me to “throw away” half of my nursing information I had learned in class because I would not use it in the prison. There are strict rules when working with inmates — a line you don’t cross. You learn the lines during specialized training before you hit the floor. You go through a week of inmate training to learn the does and don’t when taking care of inmates.

Sound scary?

Nope. As long as you follow the rules of engagement and don’t cross that line, all is well. I never had any issues working with and caring for inmates in my seven years working in the prison.

And then there was the jail. Same line, don’t cross it. You give inmates/prisoners respect, they give it back. You give them a hard time about anything, they give it back. You control how the interaction goes between you and the inmate/prisoner.

You are never alone with inmates/prisoners. The prisons give you respect because you have what they need (I didn’t say want). If they don’t need it, they don’t get it; of course, there are those nurses who DO/DID cross the line because they were looking for love in all the wrong places. Yes, it does happen.

Moving on.

With my 18 years of experience and knowledge, I am here to help YOU get to that graduation and walk across that stage. I can help you if you want it.

In addition to being a nurse/LVN, I am a freelance nurse writer. I will be blogging and writing articles for student nurses and newly-graduated nurses to help you get her nursing feet so it won’t be overwhelming from the start. Of course, nursing school IS overwhelming from the start!

Starting with pharmacology, which I hated in the beginning, I now love! I think I hated it because there was so much to understand, memorize, and learn. But, when your patient wants to know what “that” medication is, you need to be prepared to give the answer. I have been there, had that happen – especially with inmates/prisoners. They do want to know “what that is”, so if you go the Corrections career, and I sincerely hope you do, be ready for that response.

Due to medical issues for myself over the last two years, and being diagnosed with afib and sleep apnea, I did not have any experience with those, except for Afib, even though my husband had it severely and still does, now we both have sleep apnea, and that has been a whole new area of nursing I have not dealt much with. My patients had it, but they did not tell me what they were experiencing, either that, or it did not “click” at the time. It does now.

I will be covering a great deal of anatomy and physiology for you, including pharmacology, so you will have “extra” help when/if you need it. I will have articles for you to purchase for use in study groups and for your own learning/memorization tasks. A lot of pharm simply has to be memorized. That is just the way it is.

I am here to support you and help you. Let me know what you need, and I will write a blog/article on it, unless I can get a jump on where your program is so I can jump in and write about it.

For now, keep going; you are halfway home.