Inside a home's warmly lit living room just outside central campus, three students sit around a table covered with medical equipment. Alcohol wipes, gloves, vials and syringes.
“We’re practicing trying to find the veins to be able to poke them,” said Rachel Rosas, a nursing student at the University of Northern Colorado.
Rosas, along with her fellow peers and roommates Carly Swallow and Kylee Lamas, practice drawing each other's blood to be more prepared in the hospital. While the student nurses have had opportunities to draw blood in some of their classes at UNC, the number of students trying to learn makes it hard to get quality practice.
“I’ve only gotten two chances to draw blood in a clinical setting so that makes me nervous because I want to feel confident as a future graduate nurse," Swallow said. "I like to practice on each other just to put our minds at ease."
You would think stabbing your roommate with a needle at home would be more nerve-wracking than with a patient in the controlled setting of a hospital, but they would disagree.
“Here it’s a lot slower paced but in a hospital setting you have med passes. This isn’t your only patient. You have four or five other ones you need to see [and] you’re very on the move,” Lamas said.
The slow-paced and forgiving environment when practicing at home allows the student nurses to ask questions and make mistakes.
“When we’re here, we’re able to talk about it and be confused and talk through it all," Rosas said. "It really helps so that when we are in the clinical setting, it’s a little bit less stressful. I kind of know what each piece means and where it’s supposed to go."
With each blood-drawing practice session, each nursing students' confidence has grown, along with their bond with one another. By the time they get to the hospital, all that stress from before begins to go away.
“I just remember what my roommates told me when we were in our kitchen: just relax, take a breath, and go for it,” Lamas said.
