Christmas Break...

So, I'm halfway through the Christmas break and I can't believe it's half over already... I'm looking forward to the new semester. Mental Health and Family Health are going to be interesting, especially since they are in the same semester :) I have learned so much already and I'm really excited to be moving on and that I've done well in the crazy 1st semester. I'm happy with my B average and I hope that I can keep it up in the future.

Clinicals :)

I really enjoyed clinicals this week. I had an awesome experience and I got to do some things I've never done before. I really enjoyed oncology more than I thought I would. I feel invigorated and ready to soldier on with nursing school..such a blessing since I had been letting my nerves get the best of me. Now I'm ready to study for all of the upcoming tests in the next 8 days and then go back to clinicals :)

Open Lab

I really like to go to Open Lab. Every time I do, I find it to be really helpful. Today I went to practice IV Push (which I thought I knew how to do) and then discovered that I was really fumbling with it. So the instructor walked us through it and I feel much better, but I'm going back in the morning to practice some more before clinicals.

The thing that I really took from the experience though was some really good advice. To go in to testing and tell the instructor exactly what I'm doing. How much medicine I drew up, how much normal saline I mixed it with, how long I'm going to infuse it, and that I looked it up in the book. To BE CONFIDENT and act like I have it and I will do fine with it.

So that will be added to my current personal goals of the semester, which are to be more confident at clinicals and to have the assessment memorized so that I no longer need a cheat sheet and I can just do it from head to toe.

I'm just trying to take it one day at a time and remember that every day is a gift. ;)

Care Plans and Clinicals

Clinical paperwork and care plans seem to take me a very long time to complete. I am almost done with them now, but it is 1:17AM on a Saturday night. I want to finish so I can move on to reading some more med surge and pharm chapters. I need to get faster at this..lol.

Final Thoughts....

I am so happy and relieved to be finished with the final and to have passed!! I really enjoyed Fundamentals, but I'm glad to be able to move on.

The hardest thing about the class is that I could not figure out how to study for it. I tried two different study methods and got pretty close to the same grade. I'm not unhappy about it at all, since I am finishing with a B, but I'n still stumped because I can't figure out how to get better.

I really liked the Elder Reminiscence assignment because it was so interesting and enjoyable to talk to the person I got to talk to. I am also one of those weird people who enjoys research and I like writing papers, which made it even better. I retained the information that I researched and remember most of the conversation from that day still, so I felt like I learned from the assignment.

I also liked the Nutrition assignment (mostly I enjoyed eating and listening to everyone else's presentations). I didn't really like giving my own part of the presentation because talking in front of a large group is really not my thing. I did like the research part, though. I found WAY more information than there was time to share. If anyone is interested I have a friend who has just been certified in Qigong (pronounced "chee gung") and is teaching a class in it on Monday nights. ;)

I also found that I remembered nutrition pretty well for the final.

So, that's it. Thanks for a great class :D

Nearing the end of our first session!!

Wow!! I can't believe we are 5 days away from being done with Fundamentals. The last 8 weeks have really flown by!! I feel like I have learned ALOT in a very short amount of time. I just hope I can regurgitate it for the final:)

So, with that in mind, my plan is to study, study, study!!!

Our groups last clinical was today. It went really well even though we added all the extra paperwork :)

Good luck on the final everyone!!

Stressful Week

This week was really stressful for me. On Sunday night my refrigerator died. The compressor froze. So my husband went to get a new one Monday and discovered that in Tallahassee you can't just go get a refrigerator. You have to order it and have it delivered. So no refrigerator until Tuesday. We lost all of our groceries.
Then we had the culture assignment on Wednesday, which was a lot of fun, but nerve wracking for me since I don't particularly enjoy public speaking. I loved listening to everyone else's though and the class was super enjoyable!! Lab was great that afternoon, too.
I gave 2 weeks notice at my job this week too. It's a relief but I am sad too because I really like working there and I like the people I work with. I still have to work every weekend until the final, but will be reprieved when B session starts.
We also switched our phone and internet from Century Link to Comcast, which was a HUGE mistake because we have recieved the worst customer service ever from Comcast in the last 3 days. The installer tech did a shoddy job installing it in the first place and left our house with only internet and phone working, but not the cable because he thought we had a bad line somewhere. He could not fix it and did not want me to call Comcast to get it fixed until after the weekend so he wouldn't get in trouble. On Thursday after everyone in the neighborhood came home we had slower than dial up speed. By 9:00 we lost internet entirely. We called and set up an apppointment for someone to come Friday. After calling 5 times on Friday between the two of us and being assured someone would come, no one came. We still have no internet or phone (which also had died). I started to cancel the entire thing last night but the guy at the call center has asked for one more chance and said they will fix it today and they will comp us if we will be patient a little longer. I will be very surprised if that actually occurs. So I'm blogging from the work computer. I went in an hour early to do it.
Clincals was awesome, but for some reason it makes me want to sleep all day after I leave.
So there's my week. Next week should be better. :)

I don't know what week it is, but I just finished my second clinical this afternoon!!

My group's clinical was at Health South. We did not get to do any baths, unfortunately, because the patients are at the facility for therapy and therefore they go to therapy all morning and afternoon and then have baths during the 3-11 shift. We did get to make beds, some of which were in contact isolation rooms. It is really, really hot to make beds while wearing a gown and gloves!! I'm glad I got to experience it though so I would know what it's like.

We had a great experience there though. The staff was really nice and helpful and appreciated any help we could give them. So, all in all it was a good day!! :)

Week 4!!

I can't believe that we are halfway through week 4!! I'm glad to be through with the midterm and I am ready to start writing my paper...tomorrow. After that I'm going to start working on the next two chapters this weekend. I am going to be changing a few things about my study routines. I did OK on the midterm but not as well as I hoped. I am not thrilled about how I did but not entirely unhappy either :) I'm just used to working hard and knowing the material and then acing the test. This is different from that, as I expected it to be. I think I really overanalyzed some of the questions and some of them I should not have changed the answer on. So now I'm going to tweak my study routine a little bit and hopefully improve on the final.

Our group had lab today as well and we got to practice bed baths, making the bed with someone in it, oral hygiene and SHAVING!! I want to thank Gary and Greg for being brave enough to let us shave them. I was very scared that I was going accidentally nick Greg's face, but he talked me through it. Whew!!

"Never be afraid to do something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark; professionals built the titanic." - anonymous

This was posted by another friend of mine on Facebook. It exemplifies the main thing I learned during our first clinicals. Of course, I might logically understand this to be true, but I will probably still struggle with nervousness. I had a great time during clinicals and thought that it was a positive first experience. I was able to take the vital signs of the resident I was assigned to and really enjoyed hearing the stories.

I was also really excited to learn how to auscultate respiration and I was interested to hear the different abnormal breath sounds that can be heard. I have heard wheezing before because of my daughter's asthma. It was very easy to hear when she was small and her asthma was acute. Then wheezing was audible from across the room sometimes. Since she has gotten older though, the wheezing is much less noticeable. The asthma is more evident because of her skin color and energy level and sometimes an intermittent cough, plus she will feel tightness in her chest. I am saying all this to say that today when she got home from school(she rides her bike -uphill- to get here), I thought she was wheezing due to her skin color, etc.. and I was able, for the first time, to listen to her breathe through the stethoscope and hear her wheeze. I know this may not sound like such a good thing, but I can't tell you how many times I've taken her to the doctor for asthma, after medicating her, and the wheeze was gone. I have sometimes wondered if I was imagining it because I expect her to have the problem since she's had asthma for almost her whole life. And now I can check it out for myself. YAY!!

Enthusiasm:

A friend of mine just posted this on Facebook. I thought it was a good thought for tomorrow; be enthusiastic!!

Paul Harvery said:


If I could tell the people one message it would be you can do such great things with such little effort..especially if you have enthusiasm!

If you have enthusiam then get down on your knees and thank God for it. If you don't have it, get down on our knees and ask God for it.

Enthusiasm is one great idea from two Greek words "en" and "theos" translated "God within." Shouldn't you be enthusiastic if God is within you!

Week 3 - First day again...

So tomorrow is the first clinical for my group. Firsts always make me nervous. I will be fine once the firstness of it is over. I've been through many firsts in my life and I've been to lots of new places. I know it will be okay as soon as I get through the nerves. Tomorrow is going to be a great day :)

Week 2 of Nursing School

Wow!! I can't believe that we are already at the end of week 2!! It has been a busy one but I really feel that I'm learning a lot. I really love lab. It puts me in a good mood for the rest of my day. I especially liked the lab where we learn about vital signs. Mrs. Onate is extremely patient and our group is having a good time while learning. I am especially proud that I can now take Blood Pressure. It feels like such an accomplishment. I'm looking forward to the long weekend. I will probably spend most of it studying, but that in itself is a gift for me. Usually I'm working and fitting in the studying.

Day 2 of Nursing School

Although I am not required to post this often I figured I would share my day today. We got out of class early (YAY!!). I had to go home and bring shorts to school for my daughter so that she can try out for volleyball. So I went home, got shorts and delivered them to the school. No problem. I can do this and then go home and read chapter 18. Since she is the one who has asthma, I think to myself: better check to see if she has her medicine since she is trying out for a sport. They call her to the office so I can talk to her - no medicine. Do you know where it is? No.. So I went home to find it. It's not in the usual location where we store it. I search for an hour. No medicine except for some old stuff that is out of date. After class today I'm not giving her old medicine for sure (although I never did before the class). So I called Walgreens and it will be ready in an hour. I looked one more time and there it was, behind a basket on the kitchen counter. So now I am off to the school again to deliver her medicine and collect her bicycle (which she rode there this morning)...At some point tonight I will get the new script from Walgreens, and eventually I might get to study. Hopefully, as the semester goes on and this gets harder, we will be more organized and the medicine will be in her backpack where it belongs.

My Philosophy of Nursing

Nursing has been a profession that I have always admired. My mom was a nurse, then a nursing director and eventually the administrator of what was then a small privately owned nursing home facility. As a child, I spent many weekends at the nursing home if my mother was called in due to emergencies. When I was 13 I began volunteering there and at 14 I got a paying job in the Activities Department. I worked there all the way through high school and in the summers between my first two years of college. Even though I loved working at the Manor, I never considered becoming a nurse because I could not handle throw up. So I went to school to become a teacher instead.

I got half way through college and decided to get married. At the time I thought that I would take a semester off and go back to school. Life got in the way of school and I never finished my degree. Instead we decided to start a family. I was a stay at home mom and I worked part time at a preschool. It was the best of both worlds since I could take my children with me. My oldest two children benefitted greatly with this arrangement. My youngest child, LG, had RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus) when she was seven months old which subsequently caused her to have severe asthma until she was five. We spent a lot of time at Urgent Care and on the phone with several different nurses who worked for Capital Health Plan. I cannot fully express how much the help which we received meant to my family. She did not attend preschool on the advice of her doctor.

When LG went to first grade, I went back to work at the preschool. I realized pretty quickly that I really didn't love teaching preschool as much as I did when my kids were in preschool. Then something happened that changed my life. One of the kids in my class got choked on a conversation heart. I was holding her to see if she was going to be able to cough it up or if we were going to have to begin first aid and she threw up. In my shirt. And I sat on the floor and laughed because what else can you do when someone manages to throw up in your shirt. I realized that day that I had gotten over my fear of vomit.

At around the same time I had the privilege of watching one of my friends give birth. It was honestly the coolest thing I have ever seen. Giving birth is such a miracle to me. I knew then that someday I wanted to be able to have a job that would allow me to work in the delivery room. So the original reason why I decided to pursue nursing was so that I could work in Labor and Delivery. I still think that I would love to do that one day. But as I have researched nursing both by talking to friends and family and by searching on the internet I discovered that there are many, many different kinds of nurses. This appeals to me because I would love to have the opportunity to do many different things if I needed to. I really like people and I like to help. It is very satisfying to help people to figure out a solution to a problem that they might be having. A large part of nursing is taking care of others and being a part of a team which works together to make people feel better.

I have always thought that the root of nursing was taking care of people and teaching them how to care for themselves. To do this successfully a nurse must be able to assess the patient's needs and be able to decide the best course of action for that patient. There are far more nurses in the health care setting than there are doctors so nurses have to possess the knowledge and skills necessary to provide good quality care. Critical thinking is a huge part of this since if the wrong decision is made in caring for someone the consequences can be fatal.