LAST WEEK OF PEDS!

This as the title obviously implies, this was my last week of my pediatrics rotation. It's been a weird 6-weeks, with having to spend the first 2 weeks doing clinical at Mary Free Bed, then finally getting into the new hospital but only for 4 weeks. I really have enjoyed this rotation though, because if there is one thing I am comfortable with, it's KIDS. I know kids, I understand kids, I'm not afraid to just jump in and interact with kids, so this rotation was good for me. The only thing I'm not used to in this capacity is PARENTS. With adults, most of the time you are assessing your patient or taking vitals or giving meds, you are doing it alone in the room with just the patient. If someone is there at all, it is another adult 98% of the time, who isn't really concerned with what you are doing, if they are even paying attention at all to you. Parents are a whole different ballgame. Parents are hovering over their kids 24 hours a day like lion mothers. They want to know everything you are doing, who you are, why you are here, what you hear when you listen to their breathing, what they're temperature was, how much their diaper weighed, if they're blood pressure is normal. They are CRAZY, and they are enough to make anyone nervous, no matter how comfortable you are with kids. They can also be helpful though, because a lot of the parents are great and enjoy being able to teach students about their kids, especially if they have a child with a chronic condition. They also know their kids better than anyone else so i their child is having a meltdown, the parents know just what to do to help get them over it. So I guess moral of the story is that the parents can either help or hurt, but either way they are there, and they are a part of peds nursing that you just have to get used to.

This week I had a really awesome patient on Wednesday. He was 8 years old and autistic. I was a little leery of working with an autistic child because this isn't really something that I have any experience with, but I figured I could probably handle it. My instructor seemed to think this would be a good challenge for me and that I would be fine with it, so I figured I probably would be fine. I got on the unit RIGHT as the patient was being admitted from out of town. The nurse and a few residents were in there so I had to wait to get report and go in until my nurse came out of the room. The nurse filled me in and warned me that the mom was kind of "difficult" and she rolled her eyes at me. I was thinking "Wonderful, a tough kid and a difficult mom, gonna be a great day." The mom was AWESOME. The kid was AWESOME. The nurse and this mom obviously were just not compatible personalities because she warmed up to me instantly. I spent probably an hour in the room with them showing her how to work the tv, how to order meals, where she can put clothes, food that she brought, etc. She was great, and her son was a riot. Totally non-verbal but he still could definitely understand and show his emotions. I had so much fun working with them and I just really loved it. It just shows that you can't take to heart what someone says about a patient or a family because just because they don't get along with them doesn't mean that they are difficult or rude, it may just mean that you have a different personality than they do. So I am definitely learning so much about the real world of nursing from all of these clinical rotations.

Friday was our last day and we were only there unil 5ish, instead of until 8. I had only one patient and he wasn't a very involved kid. Only a few months old and his parents were living in the hospital and doing all of his care and feedings so there wasn't much for me to do. They were very nice though. This reminds me that the other thing I hate about working on a peds floor is that almost every kid is in isolation. They can be in either contact or droplet precautions, meaning if they are in contact you need to wear a gown and gloves ANYTIME you walk into the room, and if they are in droplet you have to wear a mask. Many of the kids are both, so you have to wear a gown, gloves and a mask anytime you go in the room. This is SUCH A HUGE PAIN. But it's just something you have to do to protect yourself and the other patients that you are caring for.

So now we off to another med surg rotation at Saint Mary's. I loved my last rotation there so I am really excited to go back there for another 6 weeks :) I just hate switching rotations because it seems like just when you finally have everything figured out with charting, know where everything is, have the whole layout of the floor down, BOOM... we have to move again. But I'm glad to be one step closer to graduating, only 166 days left :)

PICU! (And pretty boring Friday)

Sorry for being a big slacker on my blog recently, so here we go! Last week we had our two days of clinical on Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday I got to go to the PICU, which is the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. This is a few floors up from the floor that we are on and it's a specialty floor for kids that need more involved care than they can get on the regular pediatric floors. Each person in my group got to pick either the NICU or PICU to go to for one day, and we mostly just go to observe. I had a great nurse that kind of took care of me and showed me and around the unit. She even walked around with me to try and find things for me to do and see, which was awesome because there are very few nurses that will go out of their way for a student like that. I got to watch her put in an NJ tube under fluoroscopy on a tiny baby, which just means putting a tube in from the nose to the intestines using what pretty much looks like an MRI machine. So that was something really cool that I got to be a part of and it was definitely the coolest thing I got to see. The picture for this post is of what it looked like when I watched them put the tube in. I also got to see a lot of kids that were on ventilators and watch the nurses do all of the care that goes along with that. There were also a few kids down in the PICU with different genetic disorders that I had never seen before, and there were a few kids with cancer. And I got to watch a lumbar puncture. Very cool. The unit wasn't really all that different from the regular floors, the kids just had more things that they needed done and they needed more one on one care, so each nurse has less patients than they would have on a regular floor. I could for sure see myself working in the PICU when I am a grown up. So all in all it was a REALLY cool experience and everyone was super nice on the unit. Good stuff.

Friday I was back on our regular unit and I ended up just having one patient because as I was getting on the unit to start my shift, my second patient got transferred to the PICU. So that was a bummer because then I had a pretty boring day. He was a cute little muffin though so it was okay. And I got to hang some more IV meds which is good because I've been getting to that a lot lately and I pretty much have it down. Unfortunately other than hanging two IV meds and flushing all of the lines, I really had nothing else to do other than vitals and my assessment, so it was a pretty slow and boring day. I was definitely wishing I had my second patient. But such is life. It's okay though because I'm starting to feel much more comfortable with a lot of the skills that we are doing all the time like hanging IV's and meds, working the IV pumps, flushing feeding tubes and drawing up meds into syringes. It's pretty cool to know how close we are to being real nurses. The only thing that is very frustrating about this rotation is that our instructor tends to get sidetracked easily and is always running late when we need her to give meds, or she is just impossible to find altogether. It's very annoying when you are supposed to give a med at 5:00 and at 6 you still have no idea where she is and once you do find her it takes another 3 reminders to finally get her to come with you to do it. Usually I just end up asking my nurse to do things with me because it's MUCH easier and then I don't throw all the meds for the next entire day by being late. Plus the nurses are (mostly) all very nice and willing to help as long as you are nice to them and actually doing something. So that has been working out pretty well for me and it keeps me from getting super irritated at the instructor.

Moral of the story: I really like this clinical and I'm bummed that it's almost over! (But I am VERY ready to be off of 1-8 clinical and back to 7am-3pm, which is what my next rotation is) This has definitely confirmed for me that Pediatrics is where I want to be :)

Finally in peds :)

So although technically my pediatric rotation started in the first week of class, we JUST finally got into the new Helen Devos Children's Hospital last week. The new hospital open 1-11-11 (Cute, right?) and it is the most expensive building in Grand Rapids, ringing in at a final cost of just under $300 million dollars. The hospital has eleven floors and more than 40 different specialties all housed in it. It's absolutely unbelievable. I am putting a link below this of a little 5 minute video clip that gives you an inside look at the hospital because my explanation of it just doesn't do it justice. During our tour our entire group just walked around like little kids looking around in complete awe of everything in the hospital. Even just the little things like having all private rooms, having thermometers and vitals machines in each room, and having separate rooms on each floor for procedures, playrooms, therapy, etc. We are so lucky to be able to have clinical there. For real. It's amazing.

Watch the video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDy5a4Mxk8Y

The only thing I hate about this clinical is that it's Wednesday and Friday from 1-8pm. Clinical until 8pm on a Friday is not exactly my idea of a good time. Other than that though, it's going really well. Wednesday we took a tour for about an hour, then we got assigned our first patient. My first patient was a little boy and he was ADORABLE. His mom was with him and she was really great. We spent a lot of him just chatting and I walked around the floor with him and his parents so he could get out of her room. I love when whole families are nice and make me feel really welcome. I saw them on Friday also and went in and played with him for a little while as they were getting ready to head home. Friday I had a tiny baby as my patient. Her family wasn't the nicest, but they weren't mean either. They just seemed to generally want to get out of the hospital. I did spend a little time chatting with them when I was in there. I got to hold and feed the baby while they were gone and give her a bath so that was really fun, I miss taking care of babies since OB/Labor and Delivery was FOREVER ago. All in all, it was a really good week. The nurses were really nice, which I was really worried about because we were warned that the nurses in peds were not very nice to students. As it turns out though I've had great nurses and hopefully that streak will continue on Friday. We had a SNOW DAY today so I didn't have clinical!

So in general, as it turns out, I still love kids. Who knew right? I may have kept stealing other students patients on Friday just to hang out with and hold them. Luckily half my group doesn't really like kids :)