Time flies.

Well apparently my blog updating skills have been lacking later, so here goes! Last week in theory we learned more about Labor & Delivery, specifically about the postpartum client. I love love love the professor that we have had for lecture the last two classes, and she is doing our lecture tomorrow. Sadly after that she doesn't do anymore lectures for our class. Sad news. She is super great though. She works as an L&D nurse and has so many stories that it actually makes our 3.5 hour class bearable. We have our first theory exam tomorrow and I haven't really studied at all for it. Stay tuned for a rousing game of "Let's see how well Lindsay can guess on multiple choice questions." Should be a good time.

In other news, we are almost done with lab! :) Last week Tuesday we had our Med Calculations test, that we needed to get 100% on to pass. Aaaaand I passed it. Also on Tuesday I did my sterile technique testing and passed that as well. And sometime last week I tested out of injection sites. Maybe that was last Friday? Who knows. Either way I passed that one too. Wednesday I didn't have to go to lab because I rocked sterile technique testing. Thursday we did Medication Administration pretesting. This was SUPER helpful because we just got to have a full run through of the testing and get feedback on things we need to work on before the real test. The only thing I did wrong was not pick the right length of needle for my injection but I corrected myself at the end and the professor doing the testing said other than that I did everything exactly right. So my final testing for that is tomorrow @ 1250. If I pass that then I am done with everything for lab except for a simulation day on Thursday. These last three weeks have FLOWN by.

I guess I can continue my rambling on and talk about seminar. Oh seminar... Well, the "professor" that I have for seminar has no idea what is going on. She agreed to teach this class literally 4 days before the start of the semester (how have I gone this long without venting about this??). I get really frustrated when people don't know what's going because I like organization and I like to know exactly what I am supposed to be doing. What I don't like is having a teacher who doesn't have access to Blackboard, know ANYTHING about our program, or know what we are doing. Apparently it's totally fine to just pull random nurses off the street and let them teach seminars. She's a nice lady, but the class is BEYOND frustrating. Luckily the course coordinator is figuring this out and sending us emails to help us out.

So yeah, that's what's new. Bring on WEEK FOUR! :)

PS. "Time flies" is another expression that I hate.

Injections and my new badge reel!

So this week in theory we started learning about labor and delivery, and in the coming weeks we will talk about the postpartum client, the newborn, etc. Clearly since we are doing our OB rotation this semester. It was actually super interesting and I managed to actually listen for the whole 3.5 hours of lecture, which isn't usually the easiest thing for me. The professor that did our lecture this week will also be doing our lectures for the next two weeks, which is awesome because I love her. And I love babies. Duh.

In lab this week we learned medication administration and injections! Meds administration was pretty interesting but, like everything else we've been learning, super nit picky with a lot of things to remember. I understand that the things we need to do are for a reason. For every medication we give we have to match the physician's order with the Meds sheet, initial it. Check each med, then do the 5 Rights- right patient, right med, right dose, right route and right time. And we have to say each of these 3 separate times. It's basically pretty simple though, but it makes you really see how important it is to be accurate with medications, because our mistakes could essentially kill our patients. We also have to make sure everything is DOCUMENTED, because again, if it is documented it could lead to a double dose or big legal issues. So yeah no pressure or anything. It's not like we could mess up and kill people or anything...

Today is lab we got to do INJECTIONS! We got to learn with real needles and syringes and vials and everything. (I know I sound like an overly excited 6 year old, but it was really exciting so just go with it). We got to use different needles and gauges and "medications." We learned how to give intramuscular, subcutaneous and intradermal injections into a model of a leg. We also learned all the sites that we can give injections. It was actually really fun to learn, but it was a little overwhelming to try to remember all of the specifics about the different types of needles, sites, injections, etc. And it was definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. Picture a room of 22 people all hitting syringes with pens trying to learn to get out all the air bubbles. It was relatively hilarious. Good thing we have like 4 days to practice coming up! Practice is basically all I feel like we do these days.

Also, I bought a badge reel today that SNA is selling as a fundraiser. They are made from the tops of medication vials and they are SUPER CUTE. The picture at the top is of the one I bought today :) It's adorable.

One week down, a million to go

Well, this god awful week is finally over, and to be fair, it ended a LOT better than it started. The past few days I've been able to figure out everything on the Blackboard site, get everything printed and organized and learn how to keep all of my schedules for theory, lab and seminar straight. At least for the next three weeks until everything changes again. So now I feel like even though there is a ton of reading and work that I have to do, I feel less overwhelmed in that at least I KNOW what i'm supposed to be doing for each class. So as far as that part of being overwhelmed goes, I'm feeling a whole lot better.

This week in lab we are learning about documentation, medical calculations and sterile technique. Tuesday was just lab orientation and then Wednesday we started learning about documentation and why it's so important. Good stuff. We also learned about medical calculations, such as converting ounces to mL to teaspoons, etc. We also learned how to fill an order for say 15mg, if the solution concentration is something like 20mg/mL. We got a lot of lectures about how if we do this wrong, we will kill people. No pressure. It's not surprising then that we have to pass our med calc test with 100%. Good thing I got 100% on my pretest today. Boom. Sterile technique is a pain in the ass, because even though there isn't that much to it, it's so hard to remember not to contaminate your sterile field. You cross your hand over it...fail. You touch your sterile glove to your body, arm, hair, table...fail. Bring your hands below your waist...fail. Turn your back on the sterile field...fail. It's just a lot of nit picky stuff to remember. We have a lot of time to practice though, so i'm sure by the time we get to testing we will all be pros.

In other news, I miss my friends. I have 4 other people from last semesters lab (which I will probably forever refer to as Lab 101) in my new lab section. Nine of them are in one of the other sections and i'm super upset that i'm not with them. I see them in the morning briefly when they get out of lab and we are heading into lab, and I get really sad. We saw one of our professors from lab last semester and we literally mobbed her and had a giant group hug. The five of us in my lab section now are really trying to make new friends, and I do like a lot of the new people in my lab so hopefully I get to know some of them. I just really miss my 101 friends. I didn't think it would be this hard for us to be split up...It's fine, I know that is unbelievably lame.

Nursing marathon: Day One

After this god awful day, the last thing I feel like doing is writing in my blog about it, but I figure I will only have one first day of Nursing 320/321 so I should probably write about it. To clear up what I mean by god awful & nursing marathon is this: 12 hours of nursing classes, overwhelming stress and confusion, and the general feeling that I just want to cry.

My day started out with Nursing 320, which is our first theory class. All 64 people in my class have this one together, so I love that I get to see all my lab 101 favorite people at least once a week. It's taught by 5 different professors, with each one teaching certain lectures and making up separate sections of our exams. So in case getting used to one professors teaching style isn't hard enough, let's have 5 professors to get used to. So fine. Theory is from 8:30-11:50. The next thing we have is lab. We have lab 4 days a week for the first 4 weeks of the semester. Then we stop having lab and have 4 weeks of OB clinical and 4 weeks of primary care clinical, which isn't confusing at all right? So lab is from 12-2:50. I have 4 other people from last semester in my lab this year, which is going to be nice. In lab this semester we will learn medical calculations, passing meds, sterile technique and injections, along with a few other things. We then get a WHOPPING 40 minute break until we head to seminar from 3:30-5:20. Our seminar was ridiculous. Our professor had NO idea what was going on, knew nothing about our program and just honestly had no clue. It was so frustrating after our insanely long day. My last class today was Nursing Research, which is an online class so luckily we only meet twice all semester. So I had that tonight from 6-8:15. Holy Jesus.

The worst part about this semester is that the Blackboard site is AWFUL. It's so much information, just thrown into folders all over the place and it takes forever to navigate and figure out what is happening. After several hours of printing and organizing today I am starting to feel like I am getting a grasp on all of the sections and how to organize them. So that is making me feel a little better and a little more in control. Please take note of the picture of my binder. This literally has taken me the ENTIRE DAY to organize. As in I started it yesterday and finished it about a half hour ago. It has EASILY over 100 pages already printed in it.

320/321 is the semester that I have been being warned about since LONG before I even got into the nursing program. Everyone says that this is the hardest semester of the program and that getting through it is hell. I know going into this semester that it is going to be insanely hard, but i'm hoping that if I stay on top of everything and plan ahead I can survive without pulling my hair out. I'm hoping that I will be able to look back on this semester and think "Well that sucked, but I made it though." I think optimism and organization are going to be the key points in this semester. Ugh. We can do this.

The end of the beginning...

I can't believe that the first entry in my blog was writing about starting Nursing 315, and this entry is about the end of it. This semester has absolutely flown by faster than I could have ever expected. I feel like I have learned so much, grown so much, and made so many amazing friends that I have loved getting to know. I feel that all of things I have learned this semester have helped me to become a better nurse and all of the experiences I've had through my LEI client, standard patient, and simulation lab have pushed me about of my comfort zone in the best possible ways. More so I think this semester is about the people that I have gotten to know. My lab section this semester has been absolutely amazing and we have gotten closer than I ever expected. We have all gotten to be so close that it made our last day of lab really bittersweet. We got picture frames and cards for both of our lab professors, and when we gave them to them, there were lots of tears shed. Leaving the room was so hard, because I knew it meant that this was the end of this part of our journey. Which was really sad for me, because as we all know I don't exactly do well with change. After class we all went out for lunch at Grand Coney. Picture 14 nursing students walking down Michigan St. in uniform. Hilarious. Lunch was ridiculous and so much fun. It made me realize how much I will miss us all not being together this summer, even though I know we will see each other. After lunch we all headed back to CHS or to Erin and Kathryn's house to get rides back to campus. As we were driving I was saying how sad I was that this was ending, and even though it isn't the end, it is the end of the beginning. And we all agreed that we don't think it will ever be as good as this. And even though i'm scared a lot for start 320/321, I am definitely ready to move on, and it feels GREAT to not be the nursing new kids anymore :)

Hope you like the adorable pictures of our lab section :)

The Real World

This week was my last week in Nursing 315, which is crazy. I'm just going to talk about standard patients in this entry, but stay tuned for my cheesy reflection on 315 and thoughts on moving on to 320/321. Coming soon!:)

Thursday and Friday we had standard patients come in for us to practice doing our head to toe assessment on. Standard patients are just real people that get paid to come in and be our "patients." They are essentially the closest to real world patients that we can get. Thursday we had child patients, which a lot of my class was super nervous about, but I was clearly super excited about. Because I think I relate MUCH better to kids than to adults, so I wasn't even remotely scared of doing assessments on the kids. I was a little bit nervous to do the assessment in front of the parents in the room, but I figure after dealing with parents at day-cares for the past 4 years, I could handle it. My first "patient" was an 11 year old boy and my second was a 3 year-old boy. The 3 year-old was having a major meltdown when I walked in the room, but within a few minutes I got him to cooperate and I had SO much fun with him. He was adorable and I wanted to steal him. Don't worry, I didn't Anyway, both assessments went really well and I LOVED Thursday a lot. It made me feel super confident in my assessment skills and also with my ability to communicate with children. In case I was doubting that I wanted to work in pediatrics...lol

Friday we had adult patients. This one I was worried about. I know how to relate to kids, and I know how to talk to kids. Kids don't make me nervous, they don't make me doubt my skills, they don't know if I'm doing something wrong. Adults however, totally do. Hence, the nerves. My first "patient" was an old woman and let me tell you, she made me SUPER nervous. Once I got my bearings and started the assessment it actually went pretty well. I didn't feel like I did nearly as well as I did with the kids though. My next patient was a woman only a few years older than me, so I was much more comfortable and the assessment went really well I think. I actually had a really good time with the two days of standard patients, and it really gives us a good idea of what it will be like to do this with real patients. I also made me realize how far we have come this semester and how much we have learned. We really are turning into real life nurses, and I love that we get to have experiences like this one to help us grow and learn and see that :)

Potluck and Sim Lab

So as we wrap up our semester in Nursing 315 (yay!) we are working to put together all of the assessment skills that we have learned all semester. Another part of this wrap up is learning how to actually be able to do a head to toe assessment on an actual patient without looking like a complete idiot. True Life: Harder than you would think.

Today we did our first simulation lab. How this worked was that we got into groups of four (My group was Team Abdomen...because we were Team A and I asked Dan to say the first A word that he thought of...what does he think of? Abdomen.) There were four groups and four manikin simulations set up. One baby and three adults. One person in the group would the registered nurse, one would be the student nurse, another would be the voice of the patient if there wasn't a lab assistant doing it, and the other would be the silent observer. Each simulation lasted around 15 minutes and we had to do an appropriate assessment based on the case studies that we were given for each patient. The manikins are suuuper cool. They breathe, have a pulse, blood pressure, and fetal heart sounds. Oh and the baby can cry. And all the rooms have audio and video set up so our professors can look in on us.

The sim lab was really cool, but really nerve racking. I think a lot of us went in there thinking we knew exactly what to do and then realized it wasn't as easy as we thought it was going to be. I know I went into the room with a plan and when my plan took about half as long as I thought it would, I froze and lost all train of thought. Haha luckily I pulled it together and moved on to some other parts of the assessment. It was definitely a good learning experience though!

Side note: Yesterday we had a pot luck breakfast in lab AND we had a dance party. There was so much food...It was absolutely ridiculous. You could smell bacon the second you walked into the CHS building. It was epic. Also we look an adorable "Friends for Life" picture of the entire class. I will post it as soon as it is on Facebook :) Love my nursing friends.