Hi from the Bay Area in Northern California! I have been a nurse for about 15 years, a good chunk of those years have been in the PACU at UCSF. I really loved being in the PACU because it allows you to care for ages 0-100 and cases that are minimally invasive to critically ill and everything in between. You get to work with surgeons, anesthesiologists and really awesome nurses with various nursing backgrounds. As you might be able to tell I like variety and change. Most recently I had begun seeing patients in their homes as an RN case manager. I stopped when we had to shelter in place, since we lost childcare. At this point I will wait to get back to nursing after I get my BSN in December. So close! It’s been about 10 years since I started taking classes towards my BSN, with some long pauses taken during that time. I am just super happy to have gotten through statistics! I loved the information in statistics and it is one of the most relevant BSN pre-req’s for nursing that I have taken, but it was not easy.
Research definitely plays a role in my nursing practice. Almost all protocols come from research, from the right way to wipe down a gurney between patients to the different ERAS protocols that help patients to have optimal surgical experiences. Years ago we helped with the ERAS study for colorectal procedures in my hospital in the pre and post op areas by adhering to the standards and tracking the patients. They determined 
that it did indeed promote favorable outcomes and so adopted it as regular practice.
More personally, as you can see in the pictures, this is my crew and all my most recent group pics have been since stay at home orders started. We have two daughters ages 5 and 2.5 and we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. You could try and do the math on that if you want:) It wasn’t quite the silver anniversary we had hoped for since vacation plans were canceled, but we had a good day going cherry picking for the first time and having a Zoom party (of sorts) with family and friends. We love being outside and there are quite a few family friendly hiking trails around here. I am looking forward to biking more now that I have a trailer fo
r the girls. They aren’t ready for the long trips on their own quite yet and 15 minute bike rides don’t give much variety of scenery.
Hope all are safe and well. Looking forward to the next 8 weeks!
Welcome to the course, Laura! I think undergraduate stats was the hardest class I’ve ever taken; even worse than my DNP stats course (also hard, but not as hard). I love the Bay area and was there twice last year. My friend’s brother (that I’ve known since he was little – Drew Lansdown) is an ortho surgeon at UCSF!
Thank you! I don’t know Dr. Lansdown, if he went to UC after they opened the ortho surgery center he probably wouldn’t have had a lot of surgeries in the main PACU. Also, I left in 2016. Small world:)
My brother lives in the Bay Area in Menlo Park. I have not gotten to visit yet but we want to as soon as this COVID-19 stuff dies down. I too worked in PACU and I absolutely loved it! It was one of my favorite nursing specialties. The wide range of patients and just the overall experience was amazing. Good luck with finishing your BSN. I am also so glad that stats is over! It was an awful class. I have no desire to take another one but I’m not sure that I will get by with that. Are you all required to wear masks out there even when you are outside? I know some places have made it mandatory if not on your own property. I was just curious.
Menlo Park is nice, right near Stanford, hopefully you will get to visit soon. Yes, we are required to wear masks any time we are inside a store or if we are within 6 feet of anyone not in our household. We are still staying in quite a bit. Covid cases are on the rise so we are going to wait it out a bit more.