Students who work while in college experience high stress
By Mary Faller
Issue date: 9/29/06 Section: News
The sound of Nike tennis shoes squeaked across the linoleum floor inside the hospital waiting room, just outside of the geriatric psychiatry entrance. A young woman rounded the corner, her feet in sync with the squeaking. Her flashy, flowered scrub top camouflaged the name badge clinging to the pocket of the shirt. She tucked a loose strand of blonde hair back into her messy ponytail and proceeded to the smoking break area just outside of the floor.
Shelby K. Waltman, 20, a sophomore nursing student at Robert Morris University, spends her weekends working as a nursing assistant in the geriatric psychiatry department at Butler Memorial Hospital. With 16 credits under her belt this semester, Shelby crams at least 16 to 24 hours of work into her weekends.
As a nursing assistant, Shelby aids in the care of elderly individuals with mental health problems. A typical workday includes bathing and feeding patients, assisting nurses and generally lending a hand to individuals in need.
"It may sound pretty boring," said Shelby, "but you've got to realize that these patients aren't all there mentally. So what should be a simple task ends up taking a lot of time and energy if they get frustrated."
As a nursing student, Shelby's workload is intense, including a lot of biology and anatomy courses. This type of job is beneficial in providing experience and perhaps a future career in her field. She admits that with this type of working environment, many stressful situations have affected her.
"I'm taking complete care of people. It's not just one person at a time, I've got a floor of ten to maybe fifteen patients at a time who need me," she said. "Now if that's not stress, I don't know what is."
Although most of the stress in Shelby's line of work is due to the physical labor, stress from classes and making the grades lingers into her working environment. The question of how to deal with this lingering stress and worry was put into one simple solution.
Shelby K. Waltman, 20, a sophomore nursing student at Robert Morris University, spends her weekends working as a nursing assistant in the geriatric psychiatry department at Butler Memorial Hospital. With 16 credits under her belt this semester, Shelby crams at least 16 to 24 hours of work into her weekends.
As a nursing assistant, Shelby aids in the care of elderly individuals with mental health problems. A typical workday includes bathing and feeding patients, assisting nurses and generally lending a hand to individuals in need.
"It may sound pretty boring," said Shelby, "but you've got to realize that these patients aren't all there mentally. So what should be a simple task ends up taking a lot of time and energy if they get frustrated."
As a nursing student, Shelby's workload is intense, including a lot of biology and anatomy courses. This type of job is beneficial in providing experience and perhaps a future career in her field. She admits that with this type of working environment, many stressful situations have affected her.
"I'm taking complete care of people. It's not just one person at a time, I've got a floor of ten to maybe fifteen patients at a time who need me," she said. "Now if that's not stress, I don't know what is."
Although most of the stress in Shelby's line of work is due to the physical labor, stress from classes and making the grades lingers into her working environment. The question of how to deal with this lingering stress and worry was put into one simple solution.
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