Manning up

I don't know when I got so terrible at updating this every week. Geeze. This week I think we will just move past the mundane update about what we learned in theory (acute pain and respiratory alterations if you really want to know). Clinical was much more of an experience last week though and I guess it's important that I talk about that. So last week was the first time we were able to start taking two patients on our own. We have only been taking one until we really got the feel of the floor and learned how to do everything and chart all of the things we do on our own. Now that we have that done, it's much easier for us to take two patients on our own, and it also gives us a better idea of what it's like to be a real nurse, since obviously a real nurse wouldn't only have one patient per day.

So Wednesday was my first day of having two patients. I also had two different nurses which was a little confusing just because I had to try to get report with both of them and then find each of them to keep them updated or ask a question. It was fine though. My one patient was a woman not much older than my mom, but she looked like she was probably 75. I also had this patient on Thursday and she really was the only patient I connected with enough to remember from last week. My other two patients were both fairly simple post-op patients. Anyway, this patient had been a heavy smoker and was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She was an amazing lady and I loved getting to know her over the two days that I was with her. She was another patient though that made me realize that I am going to need to toughen up as a nurse.

I have never denied knowing that my biggest problem with nursing was going to be getting too emotional with patients or getting too attached. As a side note: the hospital has therapy dogs that come in on Thursdays and visit with the patients and families. So when the dogs came into my patients room she just started crying because she loved them so much. I got really teary about it and realized that I definitely do get too emotional. She also got upset earlier in the day when her blood pressure was too low and it broke my heart that she was so upset. I came back into the conference room and told Lisa that I need to MAN UP. Ahhh I know it's okay to be emotional, but I worry that I'm going to be too much of a baby sometimes. Lol. I guess it's all just part of the learning experience :)

Connecting the dots

So every weekend that I go home it seems that the blog gets neglected (you either get me or the blog update, Mother). So here's what you missed: Last week in theory we spent all week talking about diabetes. We have literally talked about diabetes in every science class we have taken in the past four years of college. If I don't understand it by now, honestly, just throw me out of nursing school. But needless to say, we still spent four hours of theory talking about it some more. I did learn maybe a few things that I didn't know and that were specifically useful in the Med. Surg setting.

In lab we worked more on how to hang IV bags and IV piggybacks, spike the bags, prime the tubing, etc. This was kind of cool since this is something we actually do almost everyday in clinical. However, our lab instructors tend to make every lab take about an hour longer than it really needs to. We also did a lab on positioning and transfer, which was a little bit useful, but honestly we have all been transferring patients for months and pretty much already have it figured out. Our lab on Tuesday was on the peri-operative experience, which means the entire surgery experience from pre-op to PACU. We did a simulation for this where we did stations at pre-op, admission, post-op, and discharge. This was somewhat useful because we got to at least get some hands on experience. Again it took way longer than it needed to.

On Wednesday and Thursday I had clinical. My patient on Wednesday was an older man (my clinical instructor had me on an "old man" streak for a few days). He had lung cancer and was being sent home with hospice care and was very nice. It was a pretty good day but I didn't really feel like I connected with him very much since he was going home later in the day and I didn't really get hit it off with my nurse either. Not that she wasn't helpful, she just wasn't overly willing to teach me.

My patient on Thursday was AMAZING. And I had two nurses, one was the main RN and one was an RN intern, and both of them were great. They were super nice and helpful and answered any of my questions and helped me out when I needed it. My patient was a woman in her 50's who had been newly diagnosed with lung cancer (I also have been on a lung cancer streak lately). She was such a bright and positive person, even with her new diagnoses and the uncertainty of what her prognosis was going to be. We spent a lot of time walking and talking throughout the day, and I even washed her hair for her before I left for the afternoon. This was definitely the first patient that I really felt connected with and I found myself really thinking about after I left clinical. I found myself really hoping that her prognosis would be good and that she would recover. It makes me realize how hard it is going to be for me to separate myself from my patients, which I knew, but it's becoming all too real lately (not in bad way). I had a similar experience with my patient today, but I will write about that later!

The picture is of a concept map that I had to do on a patient, making connections between all of my patients health problems. It's kind of cool to see how all of the conditions that patients have all fit together and relate to each other. It's interesting to make the connections. I feel like I'm learning SOOO much in this rotation. It's crazy.

MRSA and all things -ostomy.

Welp, this week was our first week of big kid clinical at St. Mary's. Last week we just had orientation on Wednesday and then on Thursday we just shadowed a nurse. This week we actually got assigned to a patient and were their primary caregiver for the whole day. The nurse that was assigned to that patient still went in and saw the patient occasionally and did a quick assessment, but mostly we did probably 90% of the care and of the charting. We can do all of the patient's vitals, assessment, personal care (showers and cleaning up), emptying catheters, giving medications, changing linens, etc. I had the same patient both days this week since he wasn't leaving, which was really nice. My patient was an older man, and at first I thought he was going to give me a hard time and be a crotchity old man, but I won him over :) I also spent a good deal of time talking with his wife and just talking with them. It was nice being able to get to know my patient on a personal level, since I was spending a lot of time with him. I was able to see a lot of things that I had never seen before. He had a colostomy and ureterostomy and I learned how to clean those out (Again, glamorous nursing skills). And as a side note, after taking care of him ALL day on Wednesday starting at 7am, at around 1:30 my nurse comes over to inform me that they just found out he was positive for MRSA. So for the rest of my time taking care of him we had to be wearing a gown and gloves any time we walked into the room. I understand why this is important, but it was SUCH a hassle to have to do this just to walk in the room to give him his meds or drop off a fresh glass of water, but oh well. But my nurses both days were really great and all the the nurses at St. Mary's are really great and super willing to help us with anything that we need. I am really enjoying my time there :)

New semester :)

Last week was my first week of Nursing 350/351, also known as my third semester in the nursing program. This semester we start clinical right at the beginning of the semester instead of waiting until lab is over, so I started clinical on Wednesday of last week already! We still have lab for 7 weeks though, we just have lab and clinical at the same time. In lab this semester we learn how to hang IV's, give IV push meds, insert catheters, do dressing changes, and inserting NG tubes. Lab is pretty interesting, at leas the things we are learning are things that we will actually be doing during our clinical rotation this semester. Last week we learned to hang IV's and give IV push meds so that was kind of cool since we got to actually spike and hang the bags and learn to prime the tubing. Yay real nursing skills.

This semester I am doing my first Med. Surg rotation and mental health, starting with Med. Surg. My clinical rotation for the next 6 weeks is at St. Mary's Lack's Cancer Center in Grand Rapids (The pic is of the hospital). I really like the hospital and LOVE my instructor. I have heard a lot of great things about her and about the experience that people have had on the floor that I am on so I'm really looking forward to it. The floor we are on has a variety of patients that we will be taking care of. There are many patients with cancer, but also a lot of patients that are in the hospital post-surgery for things like bariatric surgery, and colon, lung, and abdominal surgeries. This week we had orientation on Wednesday and just got a feel for the hospital, learning the computer charting system, taking a tour, and filling out paperwork. Then Thursday we just shadowed a nurse to get an idea of how they do things and how their day goes. I really love the floor and the nurses are GREAT. I think I am going to learn tons from this rotation, which is really exciting. This week we start taking on our own patients (Scary). So hopefully that all goes well. We shall see :)

Two down, three to go!

Well now I can say that the semester is OFFICIALLY and COMPLETELY over, so I have two semesters down and three to go! I had my theory final on Tuesday morning and I basically decided to protest studying but I still did fine on it. I was a little disappointed because I really wanted an A in the class, but I guess I will have to settle for the B+. I guess I am okay with it because while I know that I could have gotten an A if I stayed in Grand Rapids and studied on the weekends, I decided it was more important to come home on the weekends and spend time with my friends and family. So I guess I really don't have any regrets about that. I also had Nursing Research this semester and I ended up with an A- in the class so I'm really thrilled about that. Also I got it over with early so I don't have to take it next semester with 350!

So overall, 320/321 was NOT even that bad of a semester. Everyone kept telling us that 320 was terrible and insane and crazy hard. I kind of want to punch those people in the face for freaking us all out and making us think it was going to be awful when it wasn't bad at all. Yes it was a lot of work, it was insanely unorganized and usually really confusing, but it was completely manageable and not worth all the freaking out. My only really big criticism of the class was how HORRIBLY unorganized it was. I probably had 12 professors for 2 classes and all of them would tell us different things. If the class could just get organized it would be much more enjoyable and much less frustrating. Really though, I loved having OB this semester and I didn't hate primary care. I'm just really really glad it's all over.

I'm super excited to start Nursing 350, working in a cancer center, and a home for people with mental disabilities, and learning new things :)

Pap smears and Primary Care

Today is the END OF THE SEMESTER!!!!!!!!! :) And even though I still have a few assignments, a presentation and two finals, it still feels good to have the actually class portion of the semester done. Yesterday and today I had my two days in the primary care clinic. We were at the GVSU Family Health Center from 8-5 rooming patients, charting vitals, reporting to the Nurse Practitioners and going into the room with them for the appointments. We actually got to see a lot more things than I thought I would. I was not at ALL looking forward to primary care and thought it would be boring and that I wouldn't learn anything. In reality I actually was able to see quite a bit over the two days I was there. I got to see a medication review, two pap smears, consults for a rash, asthma, anorexia, hypertension, lab reviews and lots of other things. I also got to give a few injections to patients. Primary care gets a bad rap but really it's pretty interesting, and the faculty member that was there with us was really good at making us think critically and dig deeper to figure out diagnoses for our patients. Everyone pretty much told me he was awful, but thankfully I think they were wrong because I really liked him, probably because he is super sassy, but also because I felt like I learned a lot from him in a really short time. Moral of the story, primary care was not that bad, and the semester will be completely over in 5 days.

Say your prayers that I can make it. And not go crazy. And not kill my research professor. And throw in some smiles for good measure.

Correction: Aliens

After this tough Facebook post from Nicole: "Idk if anyone has broken this news to you yet... I hope so, bc I don't want to be the one who has to do it. But, I'll take one for the team. Those are not monsters on your blog. They're aliens... that's why it says 'take me to your leader.' Alright, let me know how you're holding up after this harsh blow and if the...re's anything I can do to help you through this difficult time. :)" I now realize that there are ALIENS on my blog. NOT monsters. What an oversight on my part.

Anyway, I didn't update last week because nothing much happened! I had class all day Tuesday, met with my nursing research group to get rolling on our presentation that we have to give next week, and worked on some stuff for Webquest. Webquest is this super fun thing we have to do for seminar where we have to do a presentation and provide a teaching tool on a topic (my group is "Avoiding the Freshman 15") So we have to do website critiques, annotated bibs, answer questions, evaluate group members, etc. So we have to finish that up during break tomorrow and then present it in seminar at 3. Then classes will be over :)

I also had my last visit with my LEI client on Wednesday. This visit we began to make a time-line of our client's life covering the first twenty years. So basically I just got to sit and listen to my client tell me stories about her life, siblings, parents, friends, school, activities, etc. I LOVED it. She had so many funny stories to tell me and I loved just being able to sit and listen to her talk (while taking extensive notes of course). It was my favorite visit by far. So now I am done with all of my LEI stuff for the semester.

This week I FINALLY do my primary care clinical days on Thursday and Friday at the Grand Valley Family Health Center (which is the picture). Then in addition to doing all of my clinical assignments this weekend, I also have to study for two finals. It's gonna be a wonderful weekend.