Don't Fake It Til You Make It!

Fake it 'til you make it. 

These were the battle cries of my nursing education. In many cases they worked. I could convince people that I was equally convinced of certain patients' diagnoses. I could often say I was efficient in IV Initiaton and then "try three times and out." It worked up until I was successful in starting one. Honestly, IV's didn't take that long. I was trained and prepared for those.

Unfortunately, the "fake it til you make it" philosophy would only get you so far. Eventually, you HAD to make it. There was NO more faking it after a certain point. I assume this point was different for each nurse. I remember well when mine was.

I had a fifty something female surgical patient. I had been nursing on the med surge floor for about a year at this point and I felt completely sure of my self. My patient was ordered a foley catheter as part of her AM surgical prep. I confidently secured the catheter kit from the supply room. I took it to the patients bedside.
 at 5am I woke the patient and confidently explained what was about to happen to her. I walked out feeling 100% sure that I could accomplish my goal. I was a registered nurse now. School was in my past. So what if I had never started a catheter on a female. It was something a nurse should know how to do. No need to be nervous.

I went into my patients room and brought a CNA with me. I told her what we were there to do and I confidently swept her bedsheets back. She spread her legs as instructed and I opened my catheter kit as i was trained. I prepared her sterile field and I froze. I took the catheter out of the box and contemplated where I could put it. The patient tried to help, she really did but I was too proud to accept any help. I insisted that I knew what I was doing. I was determined to fake it until I made it.

Unfortunately for the patient, my stubbornness ended up in a couple of unsuccessful catheter attempts. I had to eat crow and ask the oncoming day-shift nurse for assistance. She was a seasoned nurse and after one look at the patients' chart she looked at me and said, "come on then, I'm not doing this on my own." We went in and this seasoned nurse explained to me, step by step, what she was doing, and why she was doing it, and where she was putting things. I watched, amazed, and saw my first ever female urinary catherization.

"Fake it til you make it" is a phrase that's widely used in many technical college programs. I'm sure that, as it was proved with me, eventually you will have to MAKE it. The phrase says you will. I was unprepared in my moment of making it. I don't blame it on poor teaching, I had some of the best in the state. I blame it on my own lack of preparedness. I wasn't ready to make it. 

More importantly, I wasn't ready to admit that I needed help. I needed to admit that I wasn't able to "fake" it anymore. It was the worst thing that any graduate nurse had to do. I had to humble myself to the mercy of the seasoned older nurse. I had to let her teach me. After that incident I never had to ask anyone to help me cath again. In fact, I became the nurse people called to help out when they couldn't cath a patient.

So this got me to thinking about a couple of things.....

1) "Fake it till you make it doesn't work with God" It didn't work with my senior nurse, It's not gonna work with God. He knows what our works mean. No matter how many good works we do, If we aren't doing it because we trust in Jesus then our works don't matter. There is no such thing as faking it til you make it for salvation. Faking it means an eternity in hell. We all know you don't want that. Please contact me to find out how to find salvation.

2) Don't be afraid to ask for help! I'm sure that my patient would have loved me a whole lot more had I stopped prodding her with that 14fr foley and asked a more competent nurse for help!! Instead of putting her care first, I put my pride first and refused to ask for help until the absolute last minute. I even blamed my failure on the patient and pretended that it was somehow her fault that I couldn't get the cath. If I had asked for help from the beginning I would have learned to trust my mentors on my own shift. I would have learned that I was not the only one that didn't know EVERYthing from the get-go. I would have learned the importance of asking for help before my patient suffered. Same thing in my Christian life. If I had asked for help when I knew I was failing, instead of relying on my own merits to get me out of trouble; I would have come to understand God's unfailing forgiveness and his own sacrifice through His son Jesus. I would have known, sooner, that I could learn from my mistakes, and even better, I could be forgiven for my failures...... and that was the greatest lesson of all.