My blog has monsters on it :)

That's not really the point of the entry, but I just really love my new blog template. I think it's seriously adorable. I think I will let it stay for a while because it makes me smile :) I especially like that it says "Take me to your Leader" on the sides.

Anyway, this week was actually pretty busy, or at least I had something to do everyday. Monday I had my meeting with Professor Couzens to go over my care plan, Nursing diagnoses, and Teaching and Learning paper before I went to my third LEI visit on Wednesday. I managed to get everything done before my meeting by some miracle. My meeting went really well considering I thought she would tear all of my stuff apart. As it turned out she pretty much loved everything and I had almost nothing that needed to be corrected. Boom. Tuesday I had class all day, including my 4th exam, which sucked a lot. The whole class pretty much bombed it so they ended up re-evaluating the test and giving us back some points so that helped. I still did worse on this exam than any other ones and I now I have a stupid 'B+' in the class. I'm hoping to raise it back to an 'A' by the end of the semester though. Wednesday I met with my LEI client for my third visit. This visit was my teaching visit so I taught my client about constipation relief and exercises and stretching and all kinds of things. She mostly knew all of it already, but it still went well. It was a super short visit, which was nice because then I got to go to Cheryl's house and swim all day :)

Which brings me to today, Thursday. I had to go to a health fair at the Metro Health Farmer's Market and take blood pressures and hand out nutrition information. It was actually a really awesome farmer's market and I ended up buying kettle corn, some raspberry salsa (which I will bring home Mom!) and some dip mix. There were 8 students that were at this health fair we took about 80 people's blood pressure. I probably did about 15 of them. It was really interesting to talk to people about blood pressure and nutrition related to fruits and vegetables and be able to do some one on one teaching. My professor that was there with us pulled me aside and asked me if I knew what I wanted to go into yet. I told her I was thinking Pediatrics or Labor and Delivery and she told me I should go into something where I have limited time with patients because I am great at establishing rapport with clients very quickly. So that kind of made my day :)

Tomorrow I am volunteering at the Nursing 315 orientation for the class starting in the fall. It's hard to believe that I am already almost done with two semesters and now helping welcome in the new class. It feels like I JUST had my orientation and wrote my first blog entry and now we are almost done with NUR 320. Awww we are all growing up so fast :)

Baptists, Blood pressures and BMI's

Well compared to my last few posts about OB, this week wasn't really eventful in my nursing life, but I did get some things out of the way. Tuesday was a long day of class because in addition to theory and seminar we had a mandatory orientation for one of the Health fairs that we had to go to. Because it was a research project we all had to be "certified" on taking blood pressure and have our blood pressure cuffs checked out. Which meant no 3 hour break for me to get all of my homework done, so I was extra crabby.

Thursday I went on an LEI visit with Kristin for my second "buddy visit." So basically I just go with her to her visit and evaluate her on her communication, assessment, rapport, etc. Then she went with me to my visit on Friday and did the same thing. The visits we did this week were the physical assessment visits so we had to do a complete physical on our client in their homes. This is super in depth, takes forever and covers more assessments than could ever be necessary in the real world. The visits both went fine though and from now on we do the next two visits on our own. My next one is already scheduled for Wednesday.

Today I had a mandatory health fair from 12-4. We were working with a program called Body and Soul that takes place in 10 African American churches throughout Grand Rapids. The church we were working with was called New Hope Baptist Church (hence the picture). Nursing 451 students did all of the planning and executing of this aspect of the program, we just went to help take blood pressures and talk with the participants. So basically we went to a church picnic and set up a tent to take height, weight, pulse and blood pressure for all of the adults at the picnic. We calculated BMI and went over where they stood with BMI and blood pressure and referred them if they were obese or had high blood pressure. It really wasn't that awful, it just started raining and got really gross outside. But it was kind of fun to meet with people and do some patient education about BMI and blood pressure.

In other news I have so much to do right now that it's crazy. For tomorrow I have my meeting with my LEI adviser to go over my care plan, teaching/learning paper and nursing diagnoses. I haven't even started my paper yet. I also had to type of my journal from my LEI visit, physical assessment and buddy evaluation. And I have a quiz due Tuesday. Oh and did I mention the exam I have on Tuesday? Yeah, combine that with working Monday and Wednesday, Health Fair Thursday and volunteering at NUR315 orientation on Friday and its gonna be a long week. Hopefully it will go by quickly!!

Primary care overload

Friday I had Primary Care orientation and simulation all day from 9-4. It was a blast. Not. For the simulation part of the day worked with the Physician's Assistant students to care for model patients. What happened was that the nurse would go into the room, knowing only the patient's name and their chief complaint, and ask them as many pertinent questions as we could in about 5 minutes. So if the complaint was a cough we had to find out how long they had it, how it started, if they are taking anything for it, if anything makes it better or worse, etc. Along with the usual questions, meds, allergies, vital signs and all that jazz. Then we left the room and came out and reported to the PA what we had found, then we went in together and asked more questions and then the PA diagnosed the patient and we had to do the nursing diagnoses for the patient. It was pretty cool actually, and it was definitely a good idea of what it's like to work in primary care in real life.

Then we moved on to the orientation part of the day. This sucked a lot. For Primary Care we have to do a couple of things: LEI (elderly client), health fairs, and clinical. For our LEI client we need to meet with them 4 times, do their health history, a physical exam, create a care plan and teach it to them, and being making a time line of their life. We also have to write a teaching/learning paper and make write a journal for each visit. And we have to go on 2 buddy visits and write up peer evaluations for the people we observe. Super fun right? Then we also have to go to two health fairs, where we take blood pressure and hand out nutrition handouts (that we have to make), and write a reflection. Then for clinical we do two days in the GVSU Family Health Center, and for this we have to write SOAP notes, goals, and loads of other great stuff.

Moral of the story, even though primary care doesn't seem like much on the surface, it's actually going to be a crap ton of work. I am less than thrilled because I really just want to be done with school.

30 days from today I will be done for the semester :)

The day I saw a baby come out of a vagina.

I tried to come up with a more creative and less graphic title, but then I decided that if I had to see it in real life, you all could probably handle reading it. If not, I apologize. I also apologize for the two "The day I..." titles in a row. I guess my creative juices are just not flowing right now, that or they are all going into trying to write my Tuskegee paper (clearly I'm doing a great job writing it right now).

So last Friday was my last day of OB Clinical! Crazy right? Last week as also the most exciting week of clinical because I got to see TWO deliveries. I know this doesn't sound that exciting, but after waiting for three weeks to see one, it was really exciting to see deliveries two days in a row. Since I already talked about the C-section I guess I can talk about Friday! So Friday when I got there, my instructor came in and said there was a woman that was already 6cm dilated and this was her third baby (meaning her labor would probably go quickly). By the time I got down there they said she was already 8cm. So I went and found my nurse, who was AMAZING by the way, and we went in to check on the patient. When we checked her again, she was ready to push! This was at like 7:25. We called the doctor, she came in, and she started pushing at 7:42, aaaand the baby was born at 7:52. WOW. It went super quick. I got to hold one of her legs while she pushed so I was right up in the action. Once the baby was born I got to put the medication in his eyes and give him the Vitamin K shot. There's nothing like giving a shot to a 5 minute old baby to make you feel really guilty. But it was amazing and I loved being able to see the birth and be a part of it. Then the nurse let me do all of the 15 minute checks on the mom and record all of information and what not. So it was great. We left early on Friday to go to our last post-conference and I didn't want to leave...

So like I said, Friday was the last day of OB Clinical. All of our paperwork and assessments and what not was due this week and we met with our instructor to make sure everything was done and that we had passed. As happy as I am to do done with the next step of Nursing 320, I am really going to miss being in OB and seeing the babies :) I could definitely see myself working as Labor and Delivery Nurse. But now it's on to Primary Care, which I am not looking forward to even a little bit.

The day I didn't pass out in a C-Section

Today I got to see a C-Section, yaaaaaaaaaay! :) My patient today was scheduled for a C-Section at 9am, so when she came in at 7:30 I got to start working with her. My nurse today was AMAZING and let me help her do a lot of things and she was great at explaining everything that was happening. I felt super cool because I got to wear booties and a hair net and face mask and go into the operating room and all that jazz. The actual C-section took about an hour from the time we walked into the OR until the time we walked out. There were like 12 people in the OR which was crazy, but it was 2 students and one trainee and I think an extra doctor. So it was basically an OR party. I wasn't even nervous at all until the nurses and my classmates kept asking if I was nervous. Haha then dad got really fidgety and nervous too so then I started getting nervous. Mostly because I was afraid I would pass out. Totally didn't. I didn't even feel remotely hot or lightheaded at all the whole time. Watching the C-Section was REALLY cool and my nurse explained everything that was happening as they were doing it. I thought it was fascinating. Watching the doctor pull the baby out was crazy, I don't think there is really any way to prepare yourself for that. It was cool though, and the baby was great, healthy and crying when she came out. Then I got to watch the doctors do all of the sutures. The mom was also WONDERFUL. She talked to me a lot and made me feel like I was actually a part of the process. After she was mostly finished with the C-Section and her husband had left with the baby she was chatting with the staff and she yells "Lindsay how did you do!?!" Haha I told her I was doing great and she said she was glad, so it was kind of fun to be a part of it. I'm going to be taking care of her again tomorrow which will be really nice! So yeah, moral of the story, I can handle being in a surgery without passing out. This is good news. Today was BY FAR, my favorite clinical day ever. Which is cool since tomorrow is our last day :)

I can't even believe that tomorrow will be the end of OB clinical and the end of "Part 2" of the semester. Geeze.