Just Another 56 Weeks!
When I first started, I couldn't have imagined the experiences that I have had so far. I've learned a lot in 8 weeks, yet I still sometimes feel completely stupid. There is so much to learn. Their have been difficult points so far and I'm sure there will be more difficult points in the future. But without difficulties and stress, how are we grow supposed to grow as nurses and people in general?
Look Out Patients, Nurse Edwyn Might Be Giving Your Meds!
My home in Long Beach and Huntington Beach's Golden West College is between 15-20 miles apart. I gave myself an hour to get to school, even though it has never taken me more than 30 minutes to drive just so I wouldn't miss my assessment time (I was the first one up!). I knew the weather was gloomy and the road were wet. Unfortunately I didn't anticipate the world turning against me at the L.A./Orange County border.
Traffic was nice for the first 15 minutes. It was clean sailing on the 405 through Long Beach. Then the traffic stopped around the 605. I thought to myself "it's a little heavier than usual. It's ok, I'll be on time. After 20 minutes and moving only half an mile, I knew I was going to be late. I thought to myself, "Of all the f**king days to be wreaking havoc on my commute. I got off at Seal Beach Blvd. and took the street the rest of the way. Suprisingly, I was at the corner of McFadden and Golden West by 8AM, but with parking and walking to the lab, I was 10 minutes late. Hoping for the best, I rushed to the lab and I realized they started without me. Thankfully, I still got assessed and the director of the nursing program gave me a second to catch my breath.
Did I mention the person assessing my ability to pass out meds is the director of the nursing program? Don't get me wrong, I learned a lot from her during the assessment, but it's definitley intimidating. I knew I was prepared, but when you have someone there watching your every move and asking question about what you are doing, you will have a tendency to have your mind go blank (which happened on more than one occasion). But I did well, and the one tip she did give was to try and talk more and educate the patient about the medication more.
This really happened to me during the assessment. I kept flicking and redrawing the insulin and the bubbles wouldn't go away. Then my instructor took the vial and syringe, did it herself and said "there, no bubbles"
Exam #3: I Didn't Fail!!!!!!
After Exam #2, my thought process began to change. I went from thinking I could do extremely well in the program to thinking I just need to get better grades to stay in the program.
Seeing the grading scale gives you a better idea of what we have to maintain to pass the course. Their is plenty of room to get an A, but there isn't much room to pass the course. It honestly can come down to one or two points from passing and failing.
I actually did a lot more preparation for this week exam. Not necessarily more reading, but more thinking out situations that can arise. The exam focused on diabetes and integuments and this time I felt like I understood every question. The general consensus with the class was the same, either the exam was easier or we have improved our critical thinking skills (I would like to be positive and think the latter)
Another benefit of having 3 instructors. While one instructor is lecturing, the other two can grade the scantrons and post the grades online. Grades were up by the end of lecture that day and I didn't fail!!!! Looks like I can do this after all!
Thursday
Why was it a rough day? I wasn't nearly as prepared as I thought I would be for 2 patients. To make a long story short, I fell behind with one patient, which caused me to not keep track of the second patient. My instructor likes to ask questions about our patients like how the disease process should affect the patient and things we should look out for and assess. When my instructor started questioning me about the second patient, that's when my day went downhill. I couldn't answer them because I didn't know (or I did know, but my mind was all there - probably from the lack of sleep). I was then given a stern lecturing about patient safety and blah blah blah, and told to go back into the room and find out what I didn't know. I was not on my A game and I definitely knew it. When the day ended, I was glad. I hopped into bed for a couple hours behind I went to work.
Friday
Definitely a better day. I handled the day better (probably because I got more sleep) and I wanted to show my instructor that I can make a strong comeback. It definitely went a lot smoother. I made sure I knew everything that my instructor was going to ask me. I think my time management is a little bit off still, but its getting better. Doing two sets of everything can definitely make you scramble a bit, but its only going to be the beginning. I can't wait till we get 3, 4, or 5 patients.
There was a little bit of down time and I snapped a shot of the vital signs machine that we use in the hosptial. There's 5 of them, but only 2 of them have all the parts we need for vital signs. Can't you imagine the CNA's and nursing all vying for the 2 machines to do there assessment.
I've also accumulated quite of few of these in my time at the hospital. If you don't know what these are, they are lancets for doing accuchecks (for blood sugar). I press the blue button on top and a needle pricks the patient, I get my blood sample, and the patient gets some pain.
At the end of each week, the nursing student have to evaluated our performance at clinicals. Its a bit of a tedious process, but the goal is to see improvement in our ability to give patient care. Unfortunately, there is no box in which I can be conceited. I think it would have been awesome if I could have wrote "I was AWESOME" somewhere in the eval.
So there goes another blog entry written. I wonder if I can continue making the entries interesting.
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