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!!