The Road through Nursing School [AJ Placanico]

you now listening to Vices and Vultures, a podcast on cultures. What's going on? This is your boy, BH. Today is the first of many days where we will feature guests beginning with our peers and unpack their stories.

As I say in our pilot, I just finished nursing school so this is where the stories will start. Nursing school was eventful to say at least. Every single one of my good projects started with an F because when my classmates and I met up, we would spend hours discussing anything but, and this is how my love for podcast began. Aging, one of my classmates, was the first person that I shared this idea with.

And I'm glad to present these interview where we talked about our life in nursing school to become nurses. I grew up in a small town called everyone mass. We're six flexors for those of you who are in the New England area. I'm in my second bachelor's program.

I'm going to nursing school, trying to get something that can make me some money and give me what I want to be because I've always wanted to be in the medical field. So I'm at Mass College of Pharmacy doing that right now. What kind of job do you do? I'm what they call a tech in the emergency department out there in Bay State Springfield Mass and I drop blood, take the blood pressures and all that stuff.

I help the nurses out with whatever they need. We work with nurses pretty much for 12 hours a day whenever we work. We're helping them with whatever they need and compiling data and all that stuff for patients so that we can figure out what's wrong with them. Was that your first job when you got in high school?

No, so when I first got out of high school, when I was in high school, I worked as a dishwasher at my high school's kitchen during high school. Then when I graduated, I went out to Boston, I went to Boston University and a couple years after I got into Boston University, I actually became an EMT. Worked on ambulance as well as I also worked as a counselor at a homeless shelter for teen moms and their children. It sounds like you have a heavy background in the medical field in general.

Why nursing? So I always wanted to be in the medical field and I needed to do more than be an EMT or be a tech in the emergency department. And when I first had gotten out of high school, I actually got into med school. That was my first deal right there.

I was going to med school and I got into a couple of med schools and I just really couldn't make myself do that. I felt like being a nurse or being in the nursing field would be a better fit for me. It would be more hands-on care than being a doctor. I look at doctors and I see them at the hospital where I work now and they don't really converse with the patients as much as you would like or they don't really have that hands-on care.

It's more of a checkbox versus an actual caring of a person. Whereas nurses, they really care about their patients no matter what. And not the same doctors, they don't care about their patients. But they don't really take care of the patients.

They just oversee everything. Yeah, for the most part, I feel like a lot of us, we tried to go into other things before nursing. For some of my friends specifically, they would try to go into a school first. So I first got into medical school.

When I got the call that I first got into medical school or the email, I was actually at a train station in Fairfield County in Connecticut and I was on my way to Madrid, Spain for a vacation with some of my friends from high school. And I got the call and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Finally, everything from middle school, junior high, high school, undergrad, taking the MCAT everything, I had finally figured out, I had finally gotten to where I wanted to be. I had this two week trip to Madrid.

When I got back, I realized there was so much more out there than just thinking about everything that I worked up to was going to med school, but there was so much more out there that I could experience. And I looked at it and I looked at how much you have to give to be a doctor, how much you have to actually do in the medical field as a medical doctor. And I just really felt like I could do exactly what I wanted to do as a nurse. And at first, at first, I didn't really see it as a nursing thing.

I felt like because I had graduated college, I could either I could go to be a PA or something like that. I could defer. So I deferred getting into med school for a while and I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. And I came back to I got to a couple more medical schools and I really like I tried to make myself figure it out.

So for two years, I sat there trying to figure out if I could actually do this. And then three weeks, I had put the deposit down in three weeks before I was supposed to go, I decided that, you know, nursing was probably more for me than it was medical school because I could really, I could really dive in and be with a patient versus kind of sitting over the top, kind of figuring everything out, but not really giving the patients what I wanted to give them. It wasn't what they needed or because the patients need the doctor, they need the tech, they need the nurse. But it was what do you, AJ, want to give?

What do you want to give the the patient or anything like that? So no, only because I look at it. I look at it like this. I look at it like it was a better fit for me.

So I get to I get to do for people what I want to do. Like I had, okay, so I had this essay, a lot of essays to write for medical school. It was like, why do you want to become a doctor? Like it's that stereotypical thing.

And I think everything tells you to not say like, I want to be a doctor because I want to help people, but generally speaking, that's what I wanted. And I felt like I could help people in the way that I wanted to help people more as a nurse. And my thought about it was is when I was in high school, when I was in college, I only thought about being a doctor because of the status, the status or the money after the nursing school. Now, you know, I graduated, I worked for a few years.

I kind of got my shit together and I looked at it and I said, what can you what can you do that's going to make you happy? And then at the same time, it's going to make other people like be more well. And the way I looked at it was is that helping them on a bedside care kind of table where I can be doing things for them and not really having to, you know, like the red tape when you're when your doctor is just so unbelievable. But whereas a nurse, you're giving them the help they need the best that you can.

And I think a big thing apart of it was too is that I realized that life, life comes at you in a different way. I look at med school was four years and then you have three to five years for a residency and you just say, you're giving up a huge part of your life. So do you really do you really want this? And I said to myself, I think I think I want to keep the best the best 10 years of my life, seven to 10 years of my life and still be able to do exactly what I want.

Which one because at the end of the day, you still going to be able to impact people's life the way that you want to, where your parents are disappointed when you decided not to go to med school? So this is like kind of a kind of a loaded question because I feel like the first time that I realized like that when I first deferred med school, I feel like it was a shock to my parents. It was because it was everything that I had ever said. And I think a big thing is that I really held back a lot of my feelings about what I wanted to do or what I was to my parents because I was afraid that they wouldn't understand.

And for a good part of the time, both times, the first time I deferred it, then when I eventually decided that I wasn't going to go, I was always afraid that my father was going to be disappointed in me. And my mom always wanted, my mom for sure always made it clear that she wanted whatever was as long as I did something. Like as long as I bedded myself, as long as I went to college and used my education to do something was fine. And there was actually, there wasn't a very strong dialogue between my father and I and I went to go visit one of the med schools.

And I actually, I like, I had this point in time, I had this point in time where I actually we were down visiting a med school and I honestly felt like it was like I had to do that to make my dad happy with what he had done for me. Because I grew up in a situation where my parents like made everything available to me. So I have always in my life, I've always felt like I needed to do everything for them. And I never realized because I just looked at my dad and I said, you know, I don't think I can do this.

I was down there and I just said, I don't think I can do this. And you know, I'm like to the point where I'm like in tears, like I'm crying and like I'm so emotional. And you know, I finally like me and him had this talk where, you know, he looked at me and said like, you don't need to do this. Like as long as as you're happy and you do something like you can, you can be, I will be fine with everything that you do.

So I decided that it was probably the best time to really figure out in my heart what I wanted and what I wanted is, you know, I'm going to do the nursing school thing. And then I can always decide later if I want to go back, do the nurse practitioner thing and still be a provider. I might not be a doctor, but at the same time, I'll still be doing the same things as a doctor just for, you know, less money and be happier that way. Nice.

Were your parents wrong? So my mom is actually, she was born on an air force base in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Her dad was a, my grandfather was a, he was in the Marines for 20 plus years. And then he actually ended up a helicopter and ended up crashing into a, into a ditch and he actually made it home.

But he, he actually got hepatitis from the water that they drank when they were lost. And then my dad is actually, my dad was born and raised in Springfield, Mass. His parents were from, well, his dad's side of the family, they came from Italy and then his mom's side of the family, they were, they were long standing in Massachusetts. So the funny thing is, is that both of my parents, my mom, my mom had a really tough life growing up.

She didn't, she was one of eight and her father died when she was four. And she was, there was never really any kind of role model on either side, but my mom growing up, she actually left home when she was 17 with, with my aunt and they drove up from Arizona where they were living at the time, trying to drive up to Massachusetts. And similarly on the, on the, my dad's side of the family, my dad was never really, my dad was athletic and he was never afforded the opportunity to use that to get him to a higher education. He had to, his parents were divorced.

So my grandmother, she went to business and he had to work day and night out there. And neither of them really had anything at all growing up. They had terrible, terrible lives growing up, not to say that, um, like they didn't better themselves from that, but when I, when I was born, they, my dad, my dad had known to bar and my mom didn't really, my own high school education. And my mom started a business that she ended up turning into a franchise.

And my dad ended up, you know, doing his business and ended up becoming a nurse himself. And they, they both were very self-made. So you look at somebody and you, you see someone who's parents didn't care about them, whose parents abused them, whose parents only cared about themselves. And these two people came out of that and they, they made themselves better.

They put themselves from the low class into the, into the upper, you know, the middle class over just by being themselves, just by, by grinding every day and ended up becoming, you know, my mom became one of the small business women of the year in Massachusetts. My dad ended up putting, he paid himself through college. And the reason my mom's business is so successful is because my dad is so unbelievably tactful at everything that he could do the plumbing. He'd do the electricity.

He could do the carpentry, everything like that. My mom's businesses. So that over the years they haven't had to pay for everything like that. So getting to your point, what I would have to say is that my parents, it wasn't that they like, it wasn't that they, they, they showed me that they gave me everything that they could because I'm an only child.

They gave me everything that I could. It wasn't even the blueprint. It was, it was literally like they did everything in their lives that they could do to put me in a position where I had a comfortable childhood. I was, I was comfortable in college.

Like, so everything that I do is not because of the pressure. It's because I want to give, I want to give them the pride that they deserve to have when they did everything for me for 20, 20 something years. I feel like, I feel like that was very significant because a lot of us don't see that way. We always want to please ourselves.

Well, people, people just see me. People just see me as like this, this person that had it all. And you know what I did? I, I was given a lot and, but the real thing is, is that, that I, I want, I want to give my, and it's not, and I know my parents would never be disappointed in me.

It's, I want to give them because I know some sort of satisfaction. I know that they did everything and they might even, they might not even know it. They might not even realize that everything they did was just for me. But the way that they've strived over the past 26 years together is just alone.

The fact they've been together for 26 years makes me realize that I need to be in a place where I can thrive. I can find the love of my life where I can, I can at least be a fucking good citizen where, you know what I mean? So it's, it's crazy. It's just crazy.

Like I just want to do for them what they showed me they can do. Well, how's that working out for you? I'm trying, man. I'm trying, bro.

Like I'm in this school. We're about to graduate. So, you know, as long as I get one step at a time, you know, one foot in front of the other. So that's good.

So I just want to understand what happened like, you know, the process real quick. So you started, you went to a grad at VU Boston University. Yeah. And you got accepted into med school.

You dropped that and then you started into nursing at NCPHS. So at which point did you start working as a tech and, okay, and which hospital you working currently working now? So I work at Bay State Medical Center. It's the level in trauma on Springfield, Mass.

And so the day, the day, literally actually, I had already been accepted to work there, the day after I graduated from VU, I actually, I started working there. Like my orientation was literally the day after I graduated from VU. So I, you know, I started working there. I started studying for the MCAT, the med school entrance exam.

And I got into a school and that was when I, you know, I went to Spain and everything like that. And then, you know, I kind of was reevaluating everything. I defer to that school to go to med school. And I kind of kept going.

I was taking classes at the time because I was trying to figure out what I was going to do. You know, I wasn't really that sure. And, you know, at this old time, I'm working at Bay State. And then, you know, I get into a couple more med schools.

And I just, eventually, I mean, right before I started nursing school, I decided it wasn't for me. And the reason I ended up getting into MCPHS is because I actually, I thought that I was that it would be better off to go to MCPHS instead of waiting to apply to UMass, which is right down the street from my house because I would have had to wait a whole month a year. But what I wanted to do was I wanted to get done as soon as possible. So I got to MCPHS, got in there, and so that I could get a whole year, I could get a year ahead of graduating so I could become a nurse and start, you know, making more money.

So the funny thing is, is that, so my dad, my dad, when he became a nurse back in 2000, that's where he first started working was in the ER. And I could always live through him. Like, he was always like one of my heroes. It was like, this dude can do anything.

Like he's self made. He's done everything on his own for him, for my mom, for my family, everything. And I just see the ER as like that kind of place, you know what I mean? Like it seems like the kind of place where my dad was and me and my dad are so similar that I feel like I could be there.

But the also the important thing to understand is that I worked as an EMT. Now that's kind of like the infield, that's kind of like the infield emergency room. So I felt a connection between working as an EMT and the ER. And then once I graduated from high school, like it was a simple bridge.

It was like, like you want to be with your, you want to be the kind of person that your father was, you kind of want to do the ER thing. But at the same time, maybe working in hospital setting and it was a great bridge. So it's crazy because like the first thing you look at, you look at the whole dynamic of the ER and it's like, it takes a different kind of person to work in the ER. That's why like, I look at some people sometimes, they say that, you know, they want to work in the ER someday and it's like, you got to have that kind of, you got to, it's a tapped personality.

Like you got to have that really like, that, that personality that you can like shake shit off. Like someone's yelling at you, you can shake it off. Like your employees, you know, like your employers yelling, you shake it off. Like you got someone telling you what you can shake it off.

You also have this whole type of thing where you have like, as a tech now, I have like, sometimes like that last week I had 14, 15 patients and you're talking like, you got to do all this stuff so that this doctor can tell that can really kind of figure out what's wrong. But also because this nurse needs to know certain values so that they can give medications and stuff like that. So there's so many things as a tech, a nurse or a doctor in an ER that you have to know. It's not just like when you work on a cardiac floor, you want to know about hearts, when you work on a neuro floor, you got to worry about, worry about everything.

And the thing is is, you know, you kind of, you kind of look at a lot of the ER is especially like a level one trauma like base state and you, you really don't understand how packed up everything is until you work there because we got the ICU is overbooked, the cardiac floor is overbooked, the observation floor is overbooked. So you have all these patients that mean to go up there and they don't stay on there. So you got an 18 hour waiting in base stage waiting room and people don't understand that. So like you say you have 14 to 15 patients.

One sometime last week. Yeah, one night last week I had 14, 15 patients. Yeah. Is it because there's not enough tech available or is it because it's there are too many patients.

So so I was actually an extra tech on that. You know, the problem is is that what happens is is the, what I was saying before, like all of the different floors that patients that we get admitted they go to, they would, they would fill up. And then what happens is the patients when the, when the floors fill up, the ER patients, they stay in the ER. So then you're talking about everybody coming into the waiting room, they just keep coming in and keep coming in and then the people from the, the ambulance is they keep coming in and keep coming in and there's nowhere to put up.

So they either wait in the waiting room or they, they, they just sit in hallways beds and there's patients that are waiting in the ER for days just waiting for events. And then you've got these nurses. This is the other thing you got the nurses that. So ER nurses, you know, they run around four to five patients, ICU nurses, they can only have one to two patients at a time.

So you got an ER nurse that has an ICU patient waiting downstairs with them because they, they can't go up to the ICU because they're full. So they have one ICU patient and four other patients. So you're talking about a patient who normally would be one to two when they go upstairs and then there's a nurse caring for them with four other patients. And it's just, it's, it's unbelievable because the, the system, the system, like the whole, like idea that upstairs nurses should only be, you know, four patients max or ICU one to two patients max is crazy because you're just going to have the 18 hour wait that's in the waiting room last week when I had the 14 patients attack.

It's just going to go to a 24 hour wait and you're going to have someone in the waiting room dying because they're literally, they have a headache and nobody realizes that it's a brainianeurism and they're just waiting there because it's a headache and they have to wait because there's no other room for this patient. See question one is a funny thing because you look at question one and you ask any foreigners, you know, kind of their view on question one and a lot of times they're going to choose to vote yes on question one, but what they don't realize is they never worked in an ER, an ER where there's an 18 hour wait when all the nurses are already overstretched. So you're talking about an 18 hour wait, you're, you're not protecting, you're not protecting any patients whatsoever by doing that. And the only thing, the other thing is that if there's a nurse on the floor that can only have four patients, if they have five patients now and there's four patients, there's four nurses on the floor, that's five patients less than they can already take.

So you're talking about a system where there's a floor where they're already overstretched and then there's an ER that's already overstretched by far. So what I would say to question one is no, because because let me tell you people have their feet up and they're looking for things to do on those floors and the ER let me tell you something our feet hurt the second that we end working because no matter what we're always running no matter what and we're taking care of patients that should be on other floors, but it doesn't happen, you know. For someone who's had as much experience as you have in the emergency room, how important was school for you? Do you feel like school is a big part of your learning experience or?

You always need to understand the next field. So as a tech, like I learned a lot just watching the nurses, but in order, I feel like I've learned a lot in the year that I've been in nursing school, like there's things that I could have never felt that I learned because I didn't understand it from someone teaching me standpoint because I see things as a tech just by the nurses, but I know things now. Seeing things and knowing things is very different and I think school, nursing school especially has taught me how to know things versus how to see things. I understand things that I've seen now more than anything.

Interesting. Yeah. What's the learning process? Like how do you learn exactly?

I learned by doing it. I learned by doing it man. Like the funny thing is, is like a lot of people like they sit down and like they go to the books and they go to the teacher teaching them and things like that, but like the clinical experience like learning by doing has really driven me as a nursing student. I feel like if I can feel it with my hands or if I can see it by my own hands that it really it really drives what goes into my head.

When you see somebody who dies, part of what you have to do is to provide comfort to those families. Like how exactly do you provide the same comfort to yourself? Yeah. So I'm going to take you back.

The first person that I actually saw died was the same age as me. And I remember you look at the person and when they die, it's literally like a different experience. You see like in cartoons where the purple kind of overtakes the patient's body and that actually really kind of happens. And you know, the first time that I saw that it was they were the same age as me.

And I just really, you know, it kind of puts it into perspective like life is life is really short and you never know when it's going to end and you really you really have to take into account that no matter what your situation is, you should cherish every day that you have. And you know what I kind of look at is like whenever a patient dies like I'm heartbroken that you know that their family lost somebody, but you kind of put it into perspective like you you take it upon yourself to make the next day better, especially when you work in the healthcare field, like you see someone die, you make sure that whatever you do after that that day that next day, whatever you do just as good as that patient would have wanted you to if they could live. Like that patient dies and you you really think about it like this. You really think about I want to make sure that the next patient that I have that's like that I give them the best opportunity to live.

It's an ER mentality, man. That's the problem is like a lot of these floors they look at it like they're taking care of patients they're maintaining. So the ER is not considered critical care, which I think is bullshit. And the thing is is that the floors that I see you even the observation floors they are maintaining life we're saving life in the ER.

That's the problem. So you're giving them the best opportunity that they can to live. Yeah, man. You know, the big thing is is it's kind of in the medical field we're kind of blessed in the sense that you don't take your work home with you.

So you're like you're like if you're like a someone that's in business or someone that's in marketing or something like that, like you might work or like a lawyer, you're like you might work while you're at work and then you go home and you continue to think about it. When you work in the hospital as you are especially, you really kind of see like a you see your patients and then when you go home, it's over. And you really kind of have to divide that line where it's like the second you step out of work, it's like it's over. Like you saw someone die that day.

Like someone is so sick that you don't even know that when they went up to a different floor that they might not make it. You really just kind of have to feel that divide whereas like you're going to care for your patients and you really feel for them. At the same time when you leave, when you go home, you don't have to sit there and think and like and really and really think about that patient anymore because it's over. And if you can really if you can figure out that divide, it's it really helps.

But most of us that we can't like it's it's like not a thing that a lot of us can do. We have to do is you have to find that outlet. You find you know exercise. You go home and you watch like ESPN Sports Center, you go you go home and you you know you like cook this you cook this meal because cooking is like an outlet to a lot of people.

Find that outlet at home that really it really drives you to not remember that patient that really just like tore your heart out that day because they just didn't survive or something like that. What's your problem? My outlet for me is right now is I you know past couple months I've been I've been working out a lot. You know I'll leave work the next morning I'll wake up and I'll go to the gym.

But another big thing is you know just just really like hanging out with my family and you know like having a couple beers drinking or eating some food and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? You know nothing too big but I will say this. You know it really it really matters you know what people in the healthcare field do and nobody should take it for granted.

Anybody who works in the healthcare field because a lot of people you know they give us dirty looks and they yell at us when they're waiting for a long time but at the same time we can't help it because we don't control anything the people of the big wigs they control that and even to more of an extent you know the people that come in they drive more of that and they don't realize what's going on behind them when they when they don't see you know a patient dying or when they don't see a patient who is extremely ill and they're waiting and everybody has a problem but everybody doesn't have to be seen right away so we just need to as a whole for people be patient and take a little bit of less of a toll off of our texts and nurses out in those hospitals. I actually feel like overall I feel like I actually am pretty good in those situations like I can put myself in a situation where people where family members are yelling or patients are yelling in a situation where they're not getting what they need and they need something that maybe we are not able to give at that point and trying to make them understand or trying to calm them down. I feel like I'm very good in that situation overall over the past four years that I've worked in the ER as a tech even just as a tech I feel like my power to you know kind of make them understand that like everything kind of needs to give a little bit of time and that everything works a certain way but at the same time like it's very hard to please people it's very hard to make them understand and you know sometimes you just really just need to give them something you know whether it be like a soda or like maybe like a little bit of food or something like that just something to appease them and I feel like I'm very good at that and I feel like it's a it's really like a thing that you either have or you don't like some people just have that ability to serve not really serve but you know that ability to kind of see what people need in that moment just to just to calm them down and some people don't have that and you know it's tough and it's not it's not that you're a bad person you're not a good player you think it's just there's there's really like a disconnect right now between the fact that there's hours and hours of weights and there's people that maybe can't handle it the best right so like some people are just not built to be in you know certain environment if you agree yeah so so I always say this so I tell this story I was having triage one night as a tech and there was this nurse who actually was who was orienting with one of my friends and she had these flowers and she's like yeah I'm you know I'm bringing these for so and so and we said oh we thought you were we thought you were like on orientation for like two more weeks and she had actually been an ER nurse at the same exact ER for like a couple years like 20 years ago and she looked at us and she said yeah like I know but I just quit I can't handle this and my point of telling my story is that that there's just certain departments that are not four people and it's a special kind of person to work in the ER and it's not say they're not a good employee they're not a good tech and other things they're not a good doctor it's just working in the ER specifically takes a different breed of animal right it takes a person that that has that their skin is thicker than other people not only that it takes an ER where like you just really have to understand that like it's it's like it's like almost like a fast food restaurant like you not to say that it's like sloppy but it's to say that it's one after another like say there's there's like three 30 40 people there that one day and you just got it you just kind of you have to do the best job you can and you have to be give them the best care that they can to make sure everything is perfect for everybody because if one person is is kind of you know taken a back by it they're gonna get a complaint and you can't have complaints especially in the healthcare field because medicine is is key because the health of everybody is the most important thing you can do. You're looking at the finish line this is your last semester well a couple more months than you're gonna be done so do you have any expectations?

No man expectations now it's just you know kind of getting through graduating and continuing on to this path of making myself you know kind of a better person in society you know like you know we all care about ourselves way too much nowadays especially in this generation and I feel like you know giving giving some of yourself to other people is really important and in clinical or just in graduation in graduating nursing school you're giving a little bit more of yourself to the world because you're you're you're basically graduating into a program that you can you can show people that like hey I want to help other people. Well you mentioned travel nursing is it something you still interested in? Oh yeah well you know the craziest thing is is that even when I'm in school a lot of the nurse practitioner programs are online and I you know you work a year and then you can start travel nursing and you can you can really you can go all over the place and experience the world. I think you know experiencing other parts of the United States really makes you understand health as a whole because the the care of a person in Massachusetts is different than the care of a person in North Dakota or Texas or California something like that you know.

Not man just uh just take care of your health care person. Oh man that's all I'm gonna say you know you got to your text your nurses even your doctors they want to be there for you just because it doesn't seem like they they can doesn't mean they don't want to be so just make sure that you uh you you treat your you treat your people that are helping you with the with the best respect. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of Vices and Vultures and considering being a supporter of this project even leaving a review on your preferred podcast platform it was a long way for us. There's more information about this episode as well as who we are in the show notes.

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