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.