In 90 Seconds Or Less....

Hi, this is Devin again. First I want to wish Christine a happy birthday. She turned 21 one hour and twenty minutes ago!!! I love you babe, I can't wait to celebrate it with you tonight! Why am I still up at 1:20 in the morning? Because I have to be. I'm at the hospital. No I wasn't hit by another car while driving my scooter (I'll have to tell that story another time), I am here working.

You see, in the world of health care, there are no guarantees for your hours you will be working. Depending on the census at the hospital or other facility you work at, you could very easily be called off a shift here or there. I got called off a couple of days ago, and so i'm here now to make those hours up. I can usually get my hours made up by calling the house supervisor and asking for available shifts when I want them. So I started at 7 pm yesterday, and I'm going until 7 am this morning. Then I get to go do my clinicals for nursing school from 8:30-3:30. I'm not quite sure how my body is going to handle this. Hopefully your not getting a shot from me at the community clinic this afternoon :) Just kidding, i'll be fine. I've found that I have the ability to operate on very minimal amounts of sleep if needed.

I'm here in the ICU doing a 1 on 1 with a nice fellow. We do 1 on 1's with people who are a danger to themselves, always right next to them in case they start pulling out lines and tubes and cords, etc. Or if they decide to hop out of bed all of the sudden and take the whole hospital wall with them. My patient has been pretty out of it the whole night, occasionally he will talk to me in his sleep. He has talked and sung to me in both English and Vietnamese while sleeping. Very nice of him to keep me entertained.

Now on to why I wanted to write this post. A skill that I have tried to improve over the years is my "people skills". I have felt like I could do better in making good first impressions, and just connecting with people in general. So I started to do some research, and I came across a book titled "How To Make People Like You, in 90 Seconds or Less." At first I thought the book was a cheesy, useless, ploy for someone to make a buck, but as I looked more into it, it really caught my attention. I bought it and was very impressed with what I learned. Some of the chapters I enjoyed reading most were:

-First Impressions

-Attitude is Everything

-Actions Do Speak Louder Than Words

-People Like People Like Themselves

-It's Not All Talk-It's Listening, Too

As I read, and re-read many of these chapters, a lot of things started to make sense to me. The reason why I wanted to share this with you all is because it worked for me. Big time! When I went in for a job interview at the hospital I currently work at a few months ago, I took with me the skills that I had learned from this book. I don't say any of this to boast, but to help anyone else out there that struggles with the same thing I do. I was interviewed by two people at the same time, one of them was the director of the ICU and the other was the director of the Med-Surg floor. A little intense? Yes. I stayed calm and remembered what I had learned. Within five minutes of the interview, the director of ICU said to me, "Devin, you seem like you have a lot of potential, lets just get right to it, what days are you available to work?" He then said a little later, "when you graduate from nursing school, we might very well have an RN position for you."

I walked out of the interview and a couple of days later had the job. There are certain things that I learned in the book that really helped me present myself well, and helped me make a great first impression. Some things that it talks about that will help you give a great first impression to a potential employer is to keep your heart aimed directly at the person your meeting. Don't cover your heart with your hands or arms and, when possible, unbutton your jacket or coat. You should always be first with eye contact, look the person directly in the eye and let your eyes reflect your positive attitude. That's just the tip of the iceberg for this book, it goes into so much detail it's ridiculous-but it's not too long. I just wanted to refer you to it if you felt like you could use some good pointers on first impressions for a job interview, or to be able to establish rapport with your co-workers or anyone else. It's really helped me, and I bought it on Amazon for pretty cheap.