What Is A Student Nurse

What is a Student Nurse is a little ditty written by my mother when she was in nursing school (yes, I followed in her foot steps).  She must have been 17 or 18 when she wrote this funny poem.  I found it among my grandmother’s journal writings. Since I remember, all too well, my experience as a student nurse it struck a chord with me.  What Is A Student Nurse made me laugh, cry, and remember.

Last week was National Nurses Week.  I couldn’t post this then because my computer hard drive had crashed.  So, in honor of nurses week, I want to post this fun tribute to my future colleague, the student nurse.  It brings me great joy that it was written by my teenaged mother.

What Is A Student Nurse

by Leona E. Cooper

What is a Student Nurse?

They come in all sizes and shapes:

Large  Sized
Economy Sized
Pocket Edition,
Round
Square
Long

The student nurse may be found dodging head nurses, in parking lots, bargain basements, in directors offices, crying in the shower, laughing in the runways, on buses, in linen closets, on the phone, in front of the TV.

The student nurse is behind schedule, in chart rooms, in the bath tub. They are found eating in kitchens, sitting rooms, basements, bedrooms, or almost any where.

Student nurses trade sweaters, cigarettes, jokes, lipsticks, socks, and skirts.  They are usually fighting, laughing, crying, loving, hating, giggling, or sleeping.

They despise writing letters, exams, curfew, rules, duty shoes, black stockings, cleaning their rooms, emptying bed pans, hair nets, head nurses, night nurses, night watchmen, getting up in the morning, folding caps and party poops.

The student nurse annoys the doctor, intern, supervisor, head nurse, orderlies, nursing aids, kitchen maid, house-mother, grads, night watchman, cleaning lady, lab technician, pharmacist, and patients.  They get bawled out by everyone.

The student nurse loves boys, eating, clothes, shows, parties, cars, letters, phone calls, the four aces, TV, white stockings, grad pins, home, dancing, fire escapes, Gregory Peck and pay-day.

Old ladies hate them, young men like them, doctors tolerate them, grads ignore them, the operating room scares them, mothers love them, fathers support them, night watchmen tell on them, house mothers abolish them, and boy friends leave them.

No one can crowd so much junk in one dresser, into one closet, or into one room.  No one can be so wide awake at three A.M. and so sound asleep in classes. No one can dress in such a hurry, eat in such a hurry or be so late for work.  No one can contaminate, infuriate the doctor, blunder or give a wrong medications so fast as the student nurse.

The student nurse is innocence with a hypodermic needle in one hand and an enema can in the other.  Generosity with a Magolax bottle and love with a mustard plaster.

They are good at making beds, teasing elderly patients, changing colostomy dressings, cursing, running up bills, wearing out shoes, jiving and singing, they are under privileged under paid, under nourished and over mischievous.  That is a student nurse.