The start of this trimester which marks the start of my junior year, I became obsessed with the fact that I now have initials. Of course, I've always had the MRM, but now I have the all important initials BEHIND my name. Those initials will stay there until I can replace them with Michelle Malone, R.N., B.S.N. Holy cheese on a cracker I can't wait until that day. I never really thought about graduation until this semester. Because I'm now in the last part of the program.I have 5 full trimesters left and then graduation, and then NCLEX and then LIFE! But I digress...
Today was my first clinical experience. Until now, it's been all mannequins, lab partners, and case studies. Today, I got to walk into a patients room and present myself as part of their healthcare team. If that doesn't make you want to puke, I'm not sure what will. I did survive today, as did my patients, so I stack that up in the win column. I wasn't ordered out of anyone's room or no one demanded to know why I deemed myself worthy to take care of them. All good things right?
We get to the hospital around 6:50 am and met in the lobby. The teachers said they'd split us into groups and send us on our merry way. I hissed to one of our lab instructors to put me in her group. She kind of laughed and said that they were already assigned. And of course, I got the dreaded teacher that everyone is afraid of. "WHY ME?" For a fleeting moment I thought about heading out the door and back to my car, but I managed to squash that feeling and follow the other 5 students and our teacher upstairs.
After a quick tour of the floor, we got settled into the conference room, and the teacher said she'd be back. She came back with our patient assignments. She starts spouting off all of these problems our patient had and I was having trouble keeping up. She also said he was 83 year old male on Cumadin. Wellll....that made me super nervous. For those that don't know, that's a "blood thinner" which basically mean his blood doesn't clot and bruising can be a real issue.We were dismissed and sent off to our patients' rooms. My partner and I both stopped short before going in. The teacher looked at us and said "Why do you look so scared? Just go!" and I said "Well I need a minute" and she said "You've been waiting to start clinicals for 2 years. Now you're here. Get to it!" We both looked at each other, I shrugged and knocked on his door. No turning back now...
Well long story short that patient went to surgery so there wasn't much we could do for him since he wanted to sleep. Our teacher sent us to bathe another patient who spoke little to no English (Chinese was his first language) and his wife spoke just a HAIR more English than he did. She was also very insistent that we do the bath HER way...and she proceeded to strip his gown off and leave him butt naked in the middle of the room. Poor guy...
My lessons for today:
1- You can never have too much coffee
2- Nurses never stop moving. So if you get mad when you or a loved one is in the hospital and the nurse "Takes too long" just know that she has anywhere from 4-6 more patients so she's tending to their needs too, not just hanging out at the nurses station as some people think
3- Wives whose husbands are in the hospital are dangerous people. They watch EVERY move you make.
4- Nurses HAVE to be flexible.
5- I really need sleep
6- Nursing school, especially clinicals, makes you very religious. God becomes your best friend (if he wasn't already)
We had a Blessing of the Hands ceremony today after clinicals which was nice. It really helped to remind us that we're called to nursing and that God is on our side.
We go back to the hospital next week, then another check off, then finals. THEN my "break" (in which I'm expected to study dosage and brush up on skills). Then Adult 1. Whew.
I start my job Monday at the same hospital that I have clinicals at. I'll be working a PRN (as needed) job in the Admissions office. I've tried, cried and prayed about finding a job at this hospital for YEARS so I'm super excited. Now I'm just praying that they'll be able to accomodate all of my crazy school schedule for the next year and a half.
And now I must collapse into bed. Because I feel like I'm moving on auto-pilot. Sometimes I wonder what I've gotten myself into...
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