I'll see you in the ICU!

A very busy and rough week

Well, sorry to have done nothing but stick video clips up here for the last couple of weeks, but it's been crazy hectic.

With 18 units being crammed down my throat in eight weeks (eight classes!) It seems like there is always something to do and not enough time in which to do it. There's so much to read every day for every class, but there's just not enough hours in the day to read at all!

The fatigue doesn't help. Every time I open a book to read, I can't get more than a sentence or two into it before my eyes start to close; book open, eyes closed.

So here's a rundown of the last couple weeks:
Clinicals have been going much better; despite an early rough start and the fact that our clinical site is shit! Because there is an odd number of us there are three two-person groups, and one three-person group. I am in this three-person group. So, routinely the three-person group gets the most difficult patient. By most difficult I mean the most severely ill, the one with the most complications, the one closest to death's door. This wouldn't be so bad, if the third person and our group actually did anything.

Repeatedly, this third person, who was straight from her undergraduate degree and has absolutely zero experience in the clinical setting, not even volunteering, has taken a complete passive role and has not done anything but follow us into the room and stand near the door. On our second week of clinical (the maggot story) we were asked to find all nine of our patient's pulses -- difficult even on someone who doesn't have a lot of edema, on this guy--nearly impossible. Our preceptor came in and found the femoral pulse, but she had to slip her gloved fingers underneath his penis. She then said "here it is, do you want to feel it?" And looked at this shocked girl, who then took a step back, in horror, and shook her head no.


So what the hell are you doing going into nursing? How the hell do you plan on helping patients, from the doorway?

So, long story short, we were told by a representative of the group that they would like to alternate the three-person group, so that everyone gets a chance at "the interesting patients" ROFL--we laughed and said "yeah, that's totally fine with us!"

So this last week in cilnicals, we got a patient who was lucid (alert and oreinted x3) and we were able to do vital signs etc on him...that was a first.

Came home, felt great, had energy left over...fabulous. The people that had asked for "interesting" they fell asleep on the subway ride home LOL.

Careful what you ask for!

posted by sketchmonkey @ 5:02 PM