Primary care overload

Friday I had Primary Care orientation and simulation all day from 9-4. It was a blast. Not. For the simulation part of the day worked with the Physician's Assistant students to care for model patients. What happened was that the nurse would go into the room, knowing only the patient's name and their chief complaint, and ask them as many pertinent questions as we could in about 5 minutes. So if the complaint was a cough we had to find out how long they had it, how it started, if they are taking anything for it, if anything makes it better or worse, etc. Along with the usual questions, meds, allergies, vital signs and all that jazz. Then we left the room and came out and reported to the PA what we had found, then we went in together and asked more questions and then the PA diagnosed the patient and we had to do the nursing diagnoses for the patient. It was pretty cool actually, and it was definitely a good idea of what it's like to work in primary care in real life.

Then we moved on to the orientation part of the day. This sucked a lot. For Primary Care we have to do a couple of things: LEI (elderly client), health fairs, and clinical. For our LEI client we need to meet with them 4 times, do their health history, a physical exam, create a care plan and teach it to them, and being making a time line of their life. We also have to write a teaching/learning paper and make write a journal for each visit. And we have to go on 2 buddy visits and write up peer evaluations for the people we observe. Super fun right? Then we also have to go to two health fairs, where we take blood pressure and hand out nutrition handouts (that we have to make), and write a reflection. Then for clinical we do two days in the GVSU Family Health Center, and for this we have to write SOAP notes, goals, and loads of other great stuff.

Moral of the story, even though primary care doesn't seem like much on the surface, it's actually going to be a crap ton of work. I am less than thrilled because I really just want to be done with school.

30 days from today I will be done for the semester :)