by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Vicki Meyouhas

Nickname: Vickster

Age: 19

Occupation: Student nurse

Bio: This mouth-watering Brossard nubile is currently in her third and final year of a nursing degree at Dawson College. Claiming to never have skipped any nursing-related classes, she hopes and expects to soon be working in oncology, but for the time being supports herself through her gig at La Presse Café on Mansfield.

What a nurse straight out of CÉGEP earns in Quebec: $34,500 per annum.

The number of males in the Dawson nursing program: Three in a class of 64 students.

How some student nurses practice their needle injection skills: By taking turns practicing upon one another.

Do the experienced nurses always hand over the absolute worst and grossest hospital duties to the students? Not really. “They give us stuff that can take up a lot of their time, like checking patients’ vital signs and things like that, but in general, we do all the basic nursing tasks, dressings, injections, catheterizations, monitoring a patient’s progress, stuff like that - except we don’t get paid.”

Do patients sometimes get uncomfortable having a class full of student nurses observing them having a catheter inserted into their peepees? Vicki suspects that yes, sometimes they do.

Has she enjoyed the sadistic pleasure of taking culture swabs of people with STDs yet? No.

On coping with the emotional stress that might accompany spending your days forever surrounded by death and disease: “I say to myself, ‘Man, this is rough.’ And I realize this sounds cheesy, but if I can make somebody’s hospitalization just a little bit better by listening, or by teaching them about their illness, or even by simply giving them the best damn injection I can give, then, you know, it makes it all worth it.”

Does her program offer any courses to help future nurses deal with this potential anxiety? No.

Does she sense the male hospital staff getting particularly excited on the days when the student nurses come in to train? Not especially. “It’s more like us asking the teachers if there are any cute med students around.”

Has any patient, laid out in traction and unable to move their hands, ever informed her that the thing giving them the most discomfort is their raging boner - and might there be anything a sweet student nurse could do to help remedy the situation? Not yet.

Three things she does for fun: Writes humorous nursing-related anecdotes, plays guitar and kicks ass at her classical ballet classes.

Musical preferences: Beck, White Stripes, Belle and Sebastian.

Television preferences: Elimidate, Trauma: Life in the ER.

Last book read: White Oleander, by Janet Fitch.

A recent film she dug: My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Words of wisdom: “Never answer anything about your so-called words of wisdom, it can only harm your credibility. Because no matter how well-thought out you believed it to be, when you read it to your mom, after all, they always, always, end up corny and lame. And see, my words of wisdom are no exception.” :

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