The smell of failure

Eight days flied by so quickly since the first day of placement. And I still haven't encounter a successful day. My face looks exactly like this every single day.

The more questions she asked, the more the feeling of incompetency flushed up to my brain. Am I really supposed to be here?

"How come you look so puzzled?" She asked. There were 10 million things running in my mind.

'Do I know this?' 'Am I supposed to know this?' 'Where did I learn this?' 'Man, this is harmful to the patient, how come I am not alert?' I thought.

"Don't get disappointed on other ppl's comment on you. This is a learning process." She said.

'I am not disappointed on ppl's comment on me. It's just the fact that I am NOT able really drags me down, a lot. The disappointment is on myself, on how I am so not prepared to be in the ward, on how I disappoint you.' I thought.

"Don't start to doubt yourself too much when other ppl start to challenge you." She said.

'I am sorry, but how?'

"This is just bread and butter. Whenever I quiz you, so far the responses are all very disappointing." She commented.

'Yes I know. I haven't met your expectation.' I thought.

The eagerness in learning new things from her is still strong. However, sooner or later, she's gonna give up on the students who don't even have the basic, a.k.a us. Today is just another brutal day. She probably found out that we didn't know anything, not even the easy and the most superficial concepts.

1. The patient lifted up his leg from the POP slab which he's not supposed to.
2. Then I had an issue with the nurse about putting back the POP slab on before sending to Xray.
3. The next day I broke the patient's assistance alarm while lowering the rail.
4. After 8 days, we still couldn't do a satisfactory job in gait education with accessories.
5. Now we don't even know the signs and symptoms of DVT.
6. Forgot to give the assistance alarm back to the patient after transferring her back to bed.

What the heck am I doing? It feels like my first job, at DK's place. Not every collegues was nice enough to teach me stuff. Every single day, I was scared of doing harm to the patients. It was just uncomfortable to be there because the confidence level was below zero. After all these years, I can't believe I am still a piece of crap walking around with negative confidence.