It was a hot noon, when we, the 2 nd year M.Sc. Nursing students of Manipal College of Nursing, Manipal, reached Kolkata on 18 th April 2009, for a one and half month of posting in BM Birla Heart Research centre. The beautiful greenery welcomed us and we stood in front of India 's 1 st NABH accredited hospital. We were happy and equally curious about what will be our experience here. We were given a warm welcome by Mrs. Doli Biswas, Associate professor, BM Birla college of Nursing and were guided to the guest house, where we were provided with a pleasant and homely stay. On Monday we stepped into the hospital with a lot of expectations and a little fear... What would be our role here..??
Soon, our fear was vanished by the smile of Ms. Sadhna Mazumdar who welcomed us and arranged for an orientation to all the units of the hospital, the responsibility of which was given to Ms. Manashi. We were also given with a rotation plan and were told to start our duty from 20 th April. We were rotated in four areas: CCU, ITU, Operation theatre and Cath Lab.
On the same day we could meet Mrs. Asima Chakrabarti, Principal College of Nursing, who welcomed us and wished us to gain the maximum experience from the clinical and classes.
Coronary Care Unit provided us an opportunity to have on-hand experience on a variety of medical patients with cardiac problems. We saw how well the nurses take up, initiate and fulfill their responsibilities. We were given posting with staff nurses who spent their valuable time for teaching us along with providing efficient care to the patients.
The Intensive Therapy Unit provided us with unforgettable experiences of Post CABG patients. It was amazing to see the nurses following the protocols specifically and taking care of the patients. It was evident that the nurses were accountable for each of their actions and they took care of the whole aspects of the patients with a scientific rationale for their actions. It was wonderful to see the patients getting ready for ambulation on the second post-operative day and getting shifted in their highest spirit to go back to a normal life.
Cath-lab and operation theatre gave us the opportunity to observe the various interventional cardiology procedures. The staffs took us to the breathtaking sessions of interiors of heart during the surgeries. They did not forget to use each and every minute to teach us something new and encouraged us to ask more and more doubts.
During the whole period of posting, we were happy to have the pleasant presence of Ms. Madhukari Ray and Ms. Sadhna Mazumdar, who were continuously enquiring about our experiences in hospital. We were astonished to see them spending their time in daily rounds and asking each and every aspect to the patient directly.
Every day after our postings we had attended the excellent classes by the College of Nursing faculty. They took a lot of effort to present to us the various topics along with live experiences from the clinical areas.
By the time we came to OT and Cath-lab, we remembered that, it is our last week of posting, and that we were going to leave this hospital in a few days. A little pain but a lot of happiness we felt, because we were not going with empty hands…, we had a bunch of golden experiences in our hands... On our last day of posting at BMBHRC, the get-together organized was very touching; we were really finding it difficult to get words to express our gratitude to the staffs of the hospital.
This posting helped us to identify what a nurse can do, and how a nurse can do things so differently. We sincerely thank all the staffs of BMBHRC for all their support and encouragement. It was time to bid a good bye to Kolkata and we started from there, with a hope that we will meet again...
Here Manipal, in its full rain was waiting for us….