Almost completed 3/13ths of this semester!
Can you tell this is a busy semester? I hardly have any time to keep up on this blog. But as of this week we’ll have another 3 credits done and over with and that will be a big weight off our shoulders. I’m in remarkably good spirits at the moment, though. So what’s making me happy right now?
1) I just checked my grades for two papers I wrote for the policy class (the online class that’s ending this week) and found out that I got an A and an A- on them, which was a huge relief. It’s not like there was much I could do to bring up the grade at this point if I managed to totally bomb those, so it’s a relief to know that I don’t need to worry about damage control.
2) I had a good day in the med-surg clinical today… and last week. I can’t stop raving about this clinical. The patients have been great and the nurses are generally really nice and willing to help us and our instructor is amazing. My patient last Tuesday was getting an EEG done and I accompanied her to that. When I was talking to the technician we found out that the technician’s husband is good friends with my academic advisor from undergrad. That was pretty cool. On Wednesday I was the CNL (clinical nurse leader) for our group, so I didn’t take my own patient, but instead worked with my instructor and helped out other students. I did get to change one gentleman’s amputation dressing, though. I have a disturbing fascination with wounds. They’re gross, but intriguing at the same time… Anyway, I think I did a pretty good job that day of working with my fellow students, critiquing their documentation and nursing diagnoses, and helping them out with tasks. Then today I got to see a thoracentesis, where they withdraw fluid from the pleural cavity (the space between the chest wall and lung). They had done one on this patient a couple days ago and withdrew over a liter of fluid from that lung space! Today they were doing the other side, but it was only about half the amount of fluid. There’s another disturbingly fascinating process. They use ultrasound to determine where the fluid is collected and then puncture the space and insert a small plastic catheter, the other end of which is put into an evacuated chamber which essentially sucks out the fluid. They collected a little over half a liter this time. Then after that they do a chest x-ray to ensure that no air has gotten into the pleural space (which would cause a pneumothorax, AKA a collapsed lung). My patient tolerated the whole thing quite well. She was such a nice lady to talk with. We have to do a full assessment of a patient this semester so I asked if I could sit with her to do that and she was very willing. When I asked her how her heath was aside from the issue(s) that brought her in to the hospital she told me it was “damned good.” She had such a positive attitude about everything and just a little bit of sass. When I asked if she had hearing problems she told me, “when I don’t want to hear what someone’s saying, I do!” What a hoot. The nurse I was working with today was awesome, too. She’s actually starting her master’s at our school in the fall to become an educator. I told her that she will be a great instructor… she took a lot of time with us to explain things and was really encouraging. She told me that she thought I was going to be a good nurse, too… which is always good to hear! I like positive reinforcement. I love the fact that I never feel ready to leave when our time on the floor is over… even though I really liked my last clinical rotation, I was usually watching the clock a lot more, whereas now I’m wishing I could slow it down! There’s so much to see and do and not enough time to get it all in!
3) I also found out this weekend that I am officially licensed by the state as a nursing assistant. I’m hoping I can leverage that to get myself a job! I applied for one per diem position I found in the ICU/CCU of the hospital I was at last semester. We’ll see if that goes anywhere. I’ll continue to keep my eyes open. If nothing else at least I feel a sense of accomplishment having attained some level of licensure.
4) In non-school stuff I met my new kitty a couple weeks ago. She’s still too little to leave her mom, but she’s a cute little fluff ball. The kids where she is now named her Lily, and I think it’s going to stick… I like it and I didn’t have any better names in mind. She’s black and white and fuzzy. I’ll have to borrow a digital camera so I can get pictures of her whenever I finally bring her home.
5) I have a yummy potato salad in the fridge for dinner… yay for mom’s leftovers. And I checked out what the other mystery Tupperware container she sent me home with contained and it had pie. That counts as fruit, right?
I’m sure there’s more good stuff going on, but that’s all I have time to write about for now. I need to type up a couple more things for the online class for tomorrow before I can wash my hands of that. Then it’s up early again and back to the hospital to see what awaits me there!
Week from h-e-double-you-know-whats
Ugh. Blah. Yuck. Ew.
That’s my take on this week. When it rains it pours, and all that. It’s 7:45 in the evening and I’m in the library at school typing the second paper due for my policy class in two days. Never knew that malpractice could be boiled down into 6-10 pages. Nor patient safety. Heck, it took the Institute of Medicine nearly 300 pages to do it. Guess they shoulda hired me. Heh. Oh well, I’m going to head home in a few minutes, double check my last paper and send it in. Don’t know what sorta grade I can expect on it, but it will be done. I’m really rather disappointed that they decided to offer this class in a condensed 6-week format online. I actually find the information pretty interesting and important, but we only have time to give it a passing glance as we go whizzing by at 100 miles per hour. I don’t think I’m learning nearly as much as I could. But on the flip side, in about two more weeks it will be over and I can just concentrate on the other two classes which are more than enough.
Mental health is going okay. Talked to my first patient last week. Not sure how therapeutic my communication skills were, especially seeing as I couldn’t hear most of what she was saying… a combination of me being deaf and/or easily distracted when there are other conversations going on around me and the fact that she kept looking like she was dozing off mid-sentence. I’m not sure how therapeutic the entire environment there is, actually. Wouldn’t be my first place to stop if I had a serious mental illness. I’m jealous of my classmates who are at the state mental hospital since it sounds like they’ve got a really supportive environment and they actually get to follow a patient over a few weeks… the patients at my clinical site are really only there for 3-5 days, anything more serious and they’d likely be sent to the state hospital.
Adult health has been interesting. After the mass failure on the first quiz the second one went slightly better… I actually didn’t think it was that bad. I didn’t perform spectacularly, in large part because of the two papers mentioned above which have been weighing pretty heavily on my mind over the weekend, but I could have if I’d been able to put in some more study time. My classmates are all in a tizzy, though, whining about how it’s not fair, they don’t know what to study, etc., etc. I like to join in on the vent fest, but there comes a point when I feel like saying, “Shut up, move on.” Yeah, and I want to be a nurse with that generous attitude, I know. I’m enjoying learning the material, though, and feeling like I can understand more about what’s going on with my patients. We started our clinicals last week. I’m at another hospital in the same city as last semester and they’re known for their cardiac care. Coincidentally we’re spending the first half of the semester on a cardiac floor. So far I’m kinda bored and itching to get more patients and do more, but at least we’re getting settled in and getting used to a new system. My patients so far have been lovely. Last week my patient’s podiatrist was scheduled to come in and change the dressing on her foot, but I guess he got tied up so I ended up doing it! Funny how you don’t think of the grossness when you’re up close and personal with it. I felt bad because I made her wince, although she was diabetic and hadn’t been able to feel a thing before, so it was actually a good sign that she could feel pain. Didn’t make me feel any better about inflicting it on her, though! Then today I had an outpatient who was in for cardioversion. I was supposed to go in with him to observe, but we were only there until 11am and he hadn’t gone in at that point, so I wandered around the floor in bright green student scrubs for naught. Disappointing… the nurse said the physician would have probably let me push the button, too… sounds like a lot of responsibility, but apparently the equipment is rather idiot-proof, kind of like the Automated External Defibrillators out there… you can push the button ’til kingdom come if you want to, but it won’t do a darned thing unless the machine tells you to. Oh well. The nurse was really funny, though… when she saw that we were leaving for the day she was so disappointed that I didn’t get to see the cardioversion and was asking our instructor, “Can’t she stay, it would be so much fun!” Maybe next time. The staff on the floor is awesome… apparently they get a lot of students and really like having them. Our clinical instructor is great, too. It’s kind of funny, she was a nurse on the floor that I did my clinical at last semester… but I don’t think we ever would have run into her since she only worked per diem and on nights. It’s also funny because our clinical instructor last semester (on a med-surg/oncology floor) was a cardiac nurse and now we’re on a cardiac floor with an oncology nurse. I’m definitely enjoying that part of this semester. I feel bad for one of our other clinical groups who apparently has an instructor who doesn’t agree with our program… um, if you don’t agree with it, don’t teach it. Guess she darned near made at least one person cry last week. Thanking my lucky stars that I don’t have to deal with that!
Okay, it’s past 8 now and getting dark, so I’m going to head home… submit this blasted paper, then off to bed so I can get up early in the morning and take the car in for the funky noise it’s decided to start up with (because it knows I have no money) and spend the morning while it’s being fixed doing work for my mental health class. Oh, the fun, it never ends.
Catch up
It’s been a while since I last blogged, so here’s a catch-up of the past couple weeks.
Our first week ended early for some of us… the clinical instructor for the seacoast site of the mental health class was a last minute change who already had plans for that Thursday and Friday, so we ended up with an extra long weekend. A few of us went to the beach on the Thursday… unfortunately it was a steamy day everywhere in the state EXCEPT at the beach! But if you laid down on the sand the wind sort of went above and you could soak up the rays. I ended up with a rather ugly, blotchy sunburn from where I missed, or totally omitted, the sunscreen, but it felt good to be on the water blissfully ignoring the books that we all brought with us. A few of us got ice cream on the way back, too. Khalua brownie, mmm…
That Saturday I headed up to the hometown to visit my best friend from high school. She and her sister and I laid out in their parents’ back yard for a while and went for a short hike. I felt very wimpy on my short hike, definitely need to get in better shape! But at least I felt like I accomplished something.
On Sunday I was lounging around on the couch playing a disturbingly addictive game of Mah Jong (I really really want to buy the full version of that game, but I’m concerned that I will never again get anything done if I do) when a girl from school called to ask if I wanted to go to her friend’s little sister’s graduation party. I didn’t know any of these people, but I figured it was a better way to spend my time than glued to the couch playing Mah Jong. It was a lot of fun, actually. I met a few people who I had been in All-State with ten years ago. I doubt that I ever actually met them then, but it was fun to find connections between people. The world is small (as I’ve discussed before). Everyone there was super-nice and I had lots of good food.
Memorial Day itself was pretty uneventful… I spent some time on the porch with my text books, but at least I got some work done!
Second week of class was another short week because of the holiday. It started off with a quiz in our adult health class that, ahem, every single one of us bombed. It was so sad it was funny. Needless to say, that quiz is not going to count. Not to make excuses for us, but we had quite a lot of information to try to absorb in a very short amount of time, on top of two other classes and just trying to get into the swing, and a holiday weekend. Hopefully we’ll be more on the ball next week for our 2nd round! I actually felt kinda bad because one of the professors for that class is amazing and we all feel that she’s a great teacher, incredibly dynamic, gets us involved and thinking, etc. We felt bad failing on her. But what’s done is done.
To offset the failure on the quiz, I did get my final grades for first semester and I ended up with, ack!, a 4.0 for the semester. I didn’t even think that was possible. I haven’t gotten a 4.0 for a full semester since, well, I started getting GPAs. So I’m happy about that. If only it translated into free tuition…
Friday I had my first mental health clinical. I had to get up at 4:45 in the morning (blahhhh) to leave by 5:30 so that I could pick up a classmate by 6:00 to get to the seacoast by 6:45. It’s all a bit too early for me. But at least we don’t have to wear our uniforms for this clinical! We didn’t actually talk with any patients on our first day. Instead we did a bit of a hospital tour, tour of the facility, discussion of some of the issues, listened to report (they do taped report at this hospital). I have to say that I was a bit dismayed by some of the stuff that I saw/heard. Apparently this hospital used to have a 65-bed mental health facility, including a gymnasium and a pool for therapeutic use, the patients could earn privileges to go outside and walk the grounds, etc. Well, this hospital is now for-profit, so they don’t really admit people who don’t have insurance. And they shut down most of the mental health facility to turn it into a heart and lung center (which is obviously more profitable than providing mental health care). The gym and pool are gone, the patients cannot get off the ward. I can sorta see it from the insurance point of view… if the patient is well enough to be using the gym and the pool or walking the grounds then perhaps they are not in need of inpatient care. However, I also feel that therapy needs to be provided on multiple levels. The therapy currently available seems to focus largely on pharmaceuticals (which, by the way, the hospital’s owner only buys in bulk, so they only stock the “best-seller” meds, meaning that a patient may not be able to get the med that is best for his/her condition… or at least won’t get it in a timely manner) and group discussion. Good therapies, but I think it’s rather short-sighted to think that people only need those therapies. Having a physical outlet such as a gym or pool, or the ability to be alone with one’s thoughts on a walk through the grounds can also be necessary and useful. I guess they don’t want people to get too comfortable there, or something. Personally if I was stuck in that joint I’d be itching to get out ASAP. But I guess it’s good to observe all sorts of facilities to be aware of the different types of care. But I’m kinda jealous of my classmates who are at the state psych facility… I’d like to see what they get to do. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true!
So, that’s the past couple weeks…
This week I only have a half-day on campus. Tuesday and Wednesday we’re in clinical sites for our adult health class. I’m psyched because I’m going to be at another hospital in the city near me, so another short commute! Plus we’re going to be spending part of our time on a cardiac floor, and this hospital is known for it’s cardiac care, so that should be cool. And it’s a Catholic hospital, so another experience in different kinds of hospitals. I’m looking forward to that.
We’ll also start working with patients in our mental health clinical. I’m a bit intimidated since it sounds like we pretty much just walk up to a person and start talking. Our instructor assured us that the people there don’t mind talking about their stories, but it still seems awkward to me to have a group of students descending on people who are already dealing with a lot, but I’m sure once I do it once it will get easier (I hope!).
Off to study for another quiz!
