Thursday, April 9, 2009

1 more clinical day...

Can you believe it, tomorrow is my last clinical day of the semester! Tomorrow I will have finished my clinical experiences for the first two semesters of nursing school. I am so excited. I actually love clinicals, but one more last day means one day closer to graduation.

Today I had my three patients, two of them were post ops, and one was waiting to be discharged on hospice's service. They were good patients, easy patients. I think I'll have all three of them again tomorrow which will be nice, it makes my life a lot easier when I have the same patients again the second day in the week. I am really going to miss this floor, miss these nurses. Today I had a nurse named Teresa and she graduated from SFC's program just last May, so she's a newbie on the floor. She was actually a LPN for something like 12 years before she bridged to get her RN. She's good.

I just don't know how long it is going to take for me to get good. I feel like I am just not there, there is so much for me to do, to learn. My nurse today, pulled up lab values on a patient and she asked me what I saw...I don't freaking know! I was able to identify which lab values were off, but I had no idea which ones mattered. You know some of the lab values can be off by a point or two and it doesn't matter and this patient's sodium was 128, apparently that's a big deal...when will I get it?!?

Tomorrow my focus is going to be on physical assessments, I, if I'm being honest, didn't do a single thorough physical today. I mean I listened to things here and there, changes dressings other places, etc, but never did a head to toe on a single patient. I need to make sure I start getting that done. That is my goal for tomorrow, let's keep our fingers crossed that I start to get my bearings, start to put all the pieces together.

2 comments:

Sara @ Domestically Challenged said...

You're done!!! CONGRATS! Now, you'd better post and let us know how it went!

Holly said...

I hope your assessments went well. I'm getting close to graduating too, it's scary!