Skip to main content

Fall break & first clinical...



This week is our wonderful miniscule fall break.  We actually only get 2 days of fall break, but luckily our teacher gave us a break & is giving us Friday as well, yay! Of course in the middle of our break is our 2nd clinical on Thursday.  Speaking of which, last week we had our first clinical and I have to say it kind of went how I thought & it kind of didn't.
First of all, the actual "hands on" patient time was shorter than I expected seeing as our professor kept us in pre-conference from 6:30 to almost 8:00 & then we were in lunch from 11:00 to like 12:30, and when we went back upstairs we had to report BACK downstairs for post conference at 1:00.  So much for 6:30-2:30 & a 30 minute lunch.  Now don't get me wrong, I am TOTALLY not complaining about this, actually I was very happy with this arrangement, I'm just mentioning it.  Second, it wasn't as boring as I thought but there was quite a bit of walking around checking to see if other people needed our help, especially since we had to share a patient who just so happened to sleep ALL day.  Our poor little patient doesn't sleep very well at night so they sleep all day instead, so needless to say we didn't have to do much for that person.
Now to the bad part.  As I stated, for the first week we didn't have one patient to ourselves, we actually shared a patient with a partner. Sooo, that meant dividing up the clinical forms we had to turn in, which is fine, he did the meds/care plan & I did the rest.  Now this would have been honkey dorey except for the fact that I didn't think about both of us turning in the same paperwork, I mean I just didn't see the point in the redundancy & so I let my partner turn it in and I didn't.....Did you hear me? I DID NOT turn in my clinical paperwork for the first week!!!  So a couple of days after it was due I started thinking about that & I messaged my fellow students & asked them what they did & OF COURSE, they all turned in separate paperwork.  Which means....I am the ONLY one that didn't turn in my clinical paperwork!!!  Oh joy of joys.   I mean seriously!!  I don't know what I was thinking!! So I sent our professor an email & told her my rationale for not submitting my paperwork, to which she replied "I didn't receive anything in the dropbox from you.  I guess you'll just have to email it to me since it's late & the dropbox is closed".  Obviously she didn't read my email at all, but hey, as long as she let me submit it, that's all I care about.  I had about a day of freaking out thinking that I wasn't going to be able to turn it in at all, so I was very relieved to get the email from her & I promptly emailed that bad boy right over.   Whew.... crisis averted (this time).

On a different note, I have to say that I'm not sure if the teachers all got together & decided to torture us this semester but this semester has almost been like having all my classes online.  Now online classes are great, I have no problem with them, but it's so weird because there will be something due & the teachers will just post it online & if you don't check that stuff often well guess what?  You missed it.  It's kind of like a scavenger hunt figuring out if something is due or not.  Are we the only ones going through this or is this normal behavior for nursing professors? I mean seriously, if you're going to put all your lectures online & only use class time for questions then go ahead & make this a hybrid class & stop torturing us with a 3 hour class full of nothingness.....Speaking of which, one of those classes is Pharm and can I just say that I am NOT looking forward to calculating meds?? Is med calculation really that hard when you're a nurse?  Just wondering if I should be studying this much harder (ok at all, you're right I haven't looked at it at all).

Anyhoo, that's what is going on in this part of the world.  How are things in your neck of the nursing school world?



Comments

  1. We've learned dosage calc. and so far it doesn't seem to be all that hard. Especially if your teachers don't require you to do it a certain way We learned 2 plus there's one more that we can learn if we want. We get to use the one that makes the most sense to us. I already knew how to do the ratio method from chemistry but we did it in physiology too. If you know that I don't think it'll be that bad. The formula thing we learned seems super easy. I still have to do my hw to really see how the problems are though.

    Our instructors hardly put anything online. So our 6 hr and 4 hr classes are a necessity. Our assignments were given on the syllabus but no one misses them because you have to do it in order to get into checkoffs or pass the class. I'd be annoyed if I had to go to a 3 hr class for q & A time because people tend to just ask questions without reading the book first. Hope you are having a great break!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We're not really learning dosage calc, it's kind of like "You have the book, learn it" and since we're not being graded on it, we're kind of all just glazing over it....probably not the best case scenario. And yes the class itself can be quite annoying AND boring, lol.

      Delete
  2. Learning med calculation was way harder than actually having to apply it during clinical. Depending on the hospital, a lot of it is already done for you on either the MAR or the med itself so it's usually a breeze.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well we're not really learning it at all. He kind of just left it up to us to teach it to ourselves & I'm pretty sure we're all just kind of skipping it seeing as we're not being graded on it. I'm sure that will come back to bite us in the butt later on. That may be one of those things I tackle over the summer....

      Delete
  3. When I went back for my NP, I was surprised and a little overwhelmed by the fact that everything, including the lectures, was online. We were required to post questions and responses on a bulletin board and were graded on that. It was a new kind of pressure that I had never experienced before. Advanced pharm online? Man, that was one tough class. I feel your pain.

    BTW, the calculations get easier because they become second nature as you use them all them time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's all fine & great if it's presented as either an online class or even a hybrid class, but this is SUPPOSED to be a bricks & mortar class, so all of this online stuff is just frustrating. And like I said, not really for the fact that the stuff is online, but for the fact that we still have to come to class!

      Delete
  4. Clinical can be beyond frustrating when your patient is asleep through the majority of it! When that happens I usually grab a tech and ask how I can help. You will get into a flow.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think our teacher would like us following around a tech, but we do try to offer our help to other students. I think it will only be like that for the first week though since we had to share a patient and we weren't allowed to pass meds. This week we each get our own patient and we get to pass their meds too. I'm super excited about that!! Can't wait for tomorrow!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm still alive!! Tomorrow is the NCLEX!

So as you can see I have GRADUATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Woohoo!!  I am SO happy that nursing school is over, but can we say holy terrified?  Tomorrow is the NCLEX & I feel thoroughly unprepared.  Fortunately our school provided us with the HURST Review  and even though I have been studying this for about 2 weeks now I still feel completely terrified to actually take the test.  Of my former classmates I know of one so far who has failed....so scary... The rest of them are chugging along & passing on a daily basis, hopefully I will be one of them! But to rewind, here are a few pics from graduation & my graduation party that my precious husband & sister threw for me: That's my baby girl to my right, she looks taller than me!   I seriously couldn't have been cheesing any harder!! My nursing bestie & his bf hiding in the back! My study buddy!   My inlaws, aren't they precious!! Definitely one of the best days of my life!

I feel so inadequate...

So today I was reading Sophia's blog over at All Things NP , she's a NP student at Penn State.  As I was reading about her interview process with Penn State & her rotations & her Sim Man day I started thinking, I am nowhere NEAR as smart as she is.  I still struggle with what lab values are correct, much less IF they're off then why??!!  I know that I don't put in as much time studying as some of my other classmates do and all of this makes me really doubt myself.  When will this stuff start to really click? When will I start to KNOW this stuff?  I wish I could spend more time studying than I do & in all honesty I probably could, but I also have a very busy life.  I know that's not an excuse as everyone has their own "stuff", but I was seriously thinking as I was reading over her blog that I really need to buckle down & start reading a bit more.  I definitely need to start studying more.  I mean, I'm doing fine in my classes but PERSON

MedSurg - Ortho Floor....

Ok can we say TOTAL snooze fest???  Today was our first official day on the MedSurg floor, but unfortunately since the professor figured we might be overwhelmed with over 15 pages of clinical paperwork due in one night, we weren't really able to do much (meaning no passing of meds).  We were basically put into the PCT roles.  So, pretty much it felt like last semester's clinical all over again, a bunch of elderly people, except for these ones have total hip replacements instead of just being old.   And let me tell you I can say with almost 100% assurance that working on the Ortho wing of the MedSurg floor is NOT where I see my future nursing self.  I mean maybe it was just my perception, but I saw the nurses basically in the same role as they were in the nursing home.  Going from patint room to patient room passing meds.  BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I hate that we don't get an ER rotation, I REALLY think that I would like that much more, except that as a new nurse I just don'