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.

Best week ever.

I realized that I didn't update on anything nursing related last week. You may be wondering why this is. Answer: It was the best week ever. We didn't have seminar on Wednesday last week because we got time off because we had to attend LEI orientation earlier in the year, and we didn't have lab on Friday because we got comp time for when we had to meet with our LEI client earlier in the semester too. So the only day we had nursing was Thursday! :) All we did on Thursday was make modifications to our entire head to toe exam to do an assessment on children. It was a super laid back day, which was wonderful.

Yay for some time off to breathe! :)

Edward

So my new friend Matt from my nursing class is one of those people that you meet and you think "Man this kid is really quiet." Then the more time you spend around him the more you realize he is hilarious without even trying. So today Cheryl, Matt and I are studying for our Pharmacolgy exam and one of the things we are studying for this exam is hypothyroidism. Prior to this we were trying to remember the drug called Voltaren, which we pointed out sounds a lot like "Volturi" which got us on a quick Twilight conversation. We move on then to talking about the clinical presentation of hypothyroidism, which are:

Pale, expressionless face
Cold, dry skin
Lowered heart rate and temperature
Lethargy and fatigue
Intolerance to cold
Impaired mentality.

To which Matt states..."So basically it's Edward Cullen."

Touche.

Light at the end of the tunnel

First of all, I have been realizing lately how stupid some expressions really are. "Killing two birds with one stone," for example. Dumb expression, no one can ACTUALLY do this. Also "Looking a gift horse in the mouth." I understand what this means, but the expression is dumb none of the less. This leads me to "Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel." Now in order to NOT see the light at the end of the tunnel, you must be in a freakishly long tunnel. Or in this case, going through a 14 week semester. Finally, after last week, I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This week on Wednesday my group presented our cultural presentation on the Hindu culture in our seminar. Megan and Jenna dressed up in cultural dress, we made a Powerpoint and Jenna made a cool ladder to demonstrate the caste system. Moral of the story, we ROCKED it. The presentation had to be a minimum of 9 minutes, but we got cut off at 10 minutes and we ended ours with about 5 seconds to spare. We ended up getting a 95% on it, which was AWESOME.

Thursday was our final practicum! I was in the later group to go, and Dana and I ended up being the LAST pair to go. So I had to sit and be nervous for three hours before I got to go. But it was fine, I ended up getting external genitalia, anus and rectum for my random draw and it went really well. I can't even explain how happy I am that all three practicums are DONE!

Friday we had our LAST lab quiz and turned in our LEI Project, which included the health history, ecomap, genogram, meds sheet, journal, annotated bibliography and vital signs sheet. Handing in that folder was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. And our last quiz was a group quiz! :)

With all of these things FINALLY being done I can finally see the end of Nursing 315 and I gotta tell you, i'm ready to move on.

Picture this.

So this story is really more about Pharmacology than nursing, but since it involves my nursing friends, I think it is blog worthy. So Matt, Cheryl and I were studying for our Pharm quiz on Tuesday and we usually try to make up acronyms for the drugs names to help us remember them. Here are the 4 we were trying to remember then names and order of (Humalog, Novolog), (Humalin, Novolin), (NPH), and (Lantus), in that order. So here's what we come up with.

First picture a log, rolling down a hill. It's the shortest acting, and the most rapid. Now picture an Indian, running down the hill after the log (Indian because of the -in ending). These are slower acting. The next one is NPH, intermediate duration. First thing I think of for NPH? Duh. Neil Patrick Harris. Picture him chasing the Indian, chasing the log. Next one, longest acting, Lantus. Sounds like ants. Picture ants chasing Neil Patrick Harris, chasing an Indian, chasing a log.

We are this cool. But we ALL got this question right on the quiz. Boom.