Clinicals Week 3

So I know you are all hanging on the edge of your seats wondering what I did all of last week, so here goes. Tuesday in Theory we talked about the Tuskegee study, which if you don't know, happened from the 1930's to the 1970's and involved studying the effects of untreated syphilis in African American men. Even though treatment was available, these men never received it, and never even were told that they had syphili because it was more important to the government to study what would happen to the men if they let the disease just run its course. Oh and the men thought they were being treated even though they weren't. Way to go America. It wasn't until more than 20 years later that a President even apologized for this and compensated survivors and family members of the men who were part of this study. Then in seminar we watched a movie about Tuskegee called "Ms. Evers Boys" and it was pretty much just a super uplifting day.

Thursday I was in the Special Care Nursery at the hospital and I gotta say, it was not the most exciting day. Don't get me wrong, I was able to see a lot of cool stuff and learn a lot by talking to the nurse that I was working with, but as far as being able to DO anything, not so much. There was one baby in there that I got to do my assessment on that was a 34 week old and weighed only 4 pounds. The other baby in there was full term but was admitted to Special Care because she was having breathing problems and having trouble feeding. So it was really interesting to see all of the monitors and equipment in the nursery but I was pretty bored. I did get my newborn assessment done though which was something I really needed to finish so that was good! :)

Friday was just a normal day, I took care of a mother/baby couplet and did my maternal assessment on the mom I was taking care of. The day went really well, also pretty uneventful. Clinicals are really great and I really am enjoying being in the hospital. It makes me want to be done with nursing school and just be a nurse. I guess one more year isn't that long to wait right?

Labor and....no delivery,

So let's see what happened this week... Well Tuesday I had my second exam in Theory, which I again, did not study for. And this time I really mean I didn't study. I have class at 8:30 in the morning, and I started studying at exactly 8am. What did I get on it? A 93%. Yes, I am that great. I guess if you actually read, go to class, take notes and pay attention you can actually do well. Who knew.

I had my second week of OB clinical this week also. Thursday I was paired with Sam and we were assigned to a pretty good nurse. The only problem was that 2 other people were also assigned to that nurse, so there were four of us all trying to talk to and follow around one nurse. So that was really annoying and got kind of frustrating. She seemed to like us though and let us follow her around quite a bit throughout the day. The other downside of this day was that our patient was NOT thrilled about us being there. Actually she wasn't thrilled about being in the hospital at all. To make a long story short, she thought she was going to get to go home but because the baby was group B strep unknown the baby had to stay for 48 hours. It had been MAYBE 28 hours at this point. So she wasn't thrilled to say the least when we had to go in and tell her this. But it was fine, I hung out in the nursery a lot and did some newborn assessments and just hung out and loved up all the babies. Oh and Thursday I gave my first injection. I gave Hep B to a one-day old muffin :)

Friday I was in Labor and Delivery. But mostly it was all labor. Katie and I were both in L&D that day and our rooms were next to each other, so at least we got to have fun being bored together. The picture is pretty much of the type of monitor we stared at ALL DAY. When I got there my patient was 4cm dilated and had been in the hospital since the night before so I was super pumped that she was going to have the baby. She was also really nice and excited to have a student for the day. I got to see the CRNA do the epidural and he was great and let me watch and he explained everything as he went. He was really great and it was really cool to see the epidural. It was a lot different than I thought it would be, which was interesting. But moral of the story, at 1:30 she was at 8cm and there was still no baby. At 1:30 we usually change out of our scrubs, leave the floor and go to a post-conference. I asked my nurse if there was any reason that I should stay for another half hour and miss the conference and she said she didn't think it would make sense because she didn't think she was going to have the baby. So I left and went to the conference. On the way out of the conference at about 2:15 I walked past the nurse's station and asked one of the nurses what was going on with my patient and she says to me "Oh didn't anyone come and get you? She just delivered." I was HEATED and about to flip a table, lol. I was SO disappointed, but hopefully I will get to see a birth another day.

I ALSO had my first meeting with my LEI Client on Thursday and am going with Kristin to her first meeting tomorrow, so it's nice to get a jump start on that so we aren't so stressed next rotation!

Big kids!

So Friday was our first REAL day of clinicals and good news, didn't hurt anyone :) When we got there we changed into our super sweet blue scrubs, were paired up with a partner for the day and assigned to a patient. We were also assigned to report to the nurse that was in charge of the patient and listen to her get report from the nurse that was leaving. I was paired with Katie and we were assigned to a really great nurse. She actually let us take vital signs and check on ALL of her patients instead of just the one were were technically assigned to. Getting the vital signs on the babies was funny because they are SO tiny and SO wiggly and they hate being messed with when they are sleeping. We get to use these special stethoscope that are super cute because the bell that you use to listen is baby sized :) (That's what the pic is of). We also got to see a circumcision, help give a 6lb newborn baby a bath, and check vital signs on the mothers and babies. We also got to hang out with the lactation consultants and go on a few visits with them. Our nurse was really great and let us do a lot considering it was our first day. I think this was partially because it was her first day back to work in like 3 weeks and she clearly did not want to be working at 7am. This worked out well for us though because it meant we got to do a lot! She let us sit in with her when she did all of her assessments and talked with the mothers. She also worked with us to help teach us how to do all of our computer charting which is actually getting easier the more we work with it. Overall it was a really great day, and as nervous as I thought I was going to be, once we jumped into it being there just felt kind of natural. Which is what you are looking for in a chosen career :) I am really started to feel like a big kid!

Baby crazy

First of all let me just tell you, if you are wondering if I am a fan of getting up at 4:45 in the morning, I am not. That being said, I actually didn't hate the majority of my orientation at Holland Hospital today. (Side note: I feel like I have gone more orientations in the past 6 months than could possibly be necessary).

Anyway, we started off by meeting the nurse educator, filling out all of our paperwork with Human Resources, getting pictures taken for our ID badges, get our computer passwords, and getting some general questions answered. So all of that took the first two hours-ish of the time we were there. Then came the big fun. And by big fun I mean most boring 2 hours of my life spent learning computer charting. It was honestly the most boring thing ever. Not that I expected computer charting to be the most fun I've ever had but GEEZE. It was boring. And confusing. And I feel like its much more than we need to know for only being in the hospital for 8 days. But what do I know. The nurse is going to hate me on the first day when I have no idea how to do charting. Haha. Then we had our lovely lunch break. This hospital is GORGEOUS. I think I am going to really like working there. We also got a tour of the unit that we will be working on, including the Pyxis room, staff lounge, patient rooms, etc. We also get an access badge that allows us into pretty much everything on the unit except for the Meds Pyxis. We also had a lactation consultant come down and meet with us and give us some information on breastfeeding which was actually really awesome, she was great. We also went over all of the assignments that we have to do throughout our clinicals and had them all explained to us so I feel much less stressed.

I'm really happy with the hospital and looking forward to having the chance to do my first rotation there. I feel like they give us a whole lot of power and access to the hospital, which is a little crazy but pretty cool. I am really nervous to have all of the responsibility for taking care of a mother and a baby all on my own. And tomorrow we are actually going to be getting assigned to patients (mothers and babies) and learning how to do assessments on them. Tomorrow will also be a lot of learning our way around the unit. Also, after spending some time on the unit today we realized that most of the people in my group are baby whores. We were all acting like crazy people trying to see them. Needless to say, I think we are all really excited for babies! :)

Fun fact: Nurses in OB get pink name badges while everyone else gets white ones. This is to prevent new moms from giving their baby to someone who could be a baby snatcher! Ahhh people are crazy! Good thing we get pink ones! :)

End of part 1!

So from the beginning of this semester I was super overwhelmed and kind of irritated that I had to be in school all summer. To help make nursing seem less overwhelming I kept telling myself that it was really like 3 separate parts, 4 weeks of lab, 4 weeks of OB Clinical and 4 weeks of primary care (there is one week between the 2 clinical rotations). When I think of it like 3 separate parts it makes it seem much more manageable.

So this week was the end of the first part! Lab was over this week and we had our simulation lab and orientation to our clinical. For simulation lab we were in groups of 4 with people from our clinical group (there are 8 of us in each clinical group). We had 5 stations that went through and in each one we got to learn about a patient, gather information about them, and practice what assessments and what questions we would ask them and then figure out what we would do for them. The third station was when we got our simulation patent's information and we got to plan what we would do for her. In the fourth station we had our actual simulation. The manikin is one of the highest levels and has a pulse, blood pressure, respirations, etc. And all the room are audio/video equipped so when we talked to our "patient" we were really talking to our professor from the observation room. She would answer questions and talk to us as if she were the patient. The fifth room was just a de-briefing room. It was a really cool simulation to do and we are lucky that we have such an amazing facility that allows us to do these things. Grand Valley's Simulation Lab is apparently becoming a pretty big deal.

The rest of the day was clinical orientation to the hospital we will be working at; my OB clinical is at Holland Hospital. This was the first time we got to break up into our clinical groups and meet our clinical faculty member. There are 8 people in my group, and most of them are people I already know. I think my group will be a lot of fun and I really like everyone in it. Our faculty person seems super nice and she is super organized. I think I will really enjoy being at Holland, even though it seems like there is a ton of stuff we have to bring with us on the first day. I am really excited to finally start doing clinicals, since it seems like this is really what we have been working toward. Hopefully I really enjoy my first rotation and not get lost or mess anything up. We are all carpooling on the first day so at least we won't get lost!

You can go here if you are interested in the hospital I will be at www.hollandhospital.org :)

Passing lab and not failing Exam One

I know its not a very creative title for this post, but what can I say, it's what happened today. Contrary to what I thought yesterday, I only had to play the "multiple choice guessing game" a limited number of times on my theory exam. I actually ended up getting an 87% on it, which is amazing, considering that I studied for MAYBE a grand total of an hour. So needless to say, I was pretty impressed with myself. And since this exam is worth a lot more than the other ones, it's nice to have a pretty solid start. So yeah, good stuff. I also passed by Medication Administration final testing today so now I've passed out of all my lab skills and get tomorrow off :) And we are done with lab for the semester! Now all I have left this week is OB Simulation Lab and Clinical Orientation from 9-4 on Thursday and I'm done for the week.

Score.