Theory Day 1

Rocked the quiz over rhythm strips including times for each wave and interval.

I am also TB free. Thanks for caring!

-DV

The beginning of the end

Alas, here I am in the first week of my last semester. WOOT! I took the summer off just to recharge and spend some much needed time with my family. I applied for several PT/PRN tech jobs but only got one interview. I didn’t get the job, however. At this point I’m happy for that outcome. While I would have liked getting some experience dealing with patients and staff, I am glad to be able to concentrate on my studies over the next few weeks. I did spend a little time this summer reviewing and going over anticipated material for this semester, but not as much as I had hoped. I suppose that’s how it goes; you start out with the best of intentions…

As for today… I believe I got a little too comfortable with my summer schedule and was not looking forward to starting classes this semester. THEN, I went to my first clinical on Tuesday. I am so pumped about being at the “county hospital” that I can’t even begin to tell you. My clinical instructor is going to be awesome. She has a great sense of humor and at the same time will be willing to push me to learn everything I need to learn before I graduate. (Which is December 15th BTW!!!!! Super WOOT!) You can tell that she is really passionate about critical care and making sure that we learn something this semester.

In just a few hours, I’ll be attending my first lecture for the semester. Cardiac! I am looking forward to this unit. I hope I remember something from Adult I last fall. We’re supposed to have quizzes every day so I’ve bee brushing up.

Hopefully I’ll get black to blogging a little more now. It seems like yesterday that I started this blog and now I’ve got just a few weeks left.

-DV

TB, or not TB, that is the question...

Damn... I just realized that my TB test is out of date and Tuesday is my first clinical day. Today is Thursday, hence, I can't get the test until Monday 'cause they have to see the result in three days. Maybe I'll slide by, seeing as how I won't be having any direct patient contact.

Fracking rules!

-DV

Where do babies come from?

I can officially answer that question now that I have completed my “Mother-Baby” rotation. I am very glad to have learned about women’s issues, but I have to say that I am very glad to be done with this rotation. My biggest complaint…the nurses that I had to shadow. With only a couple of exceptions the nurses did not provide a very good learning environment. I recall my day in the nursery when I was supposed to follow the “baby catcher”; she wanted nothing to do with me. I tried to ask pertinent questions, be helpful, all the things a good student nurse should do, but got nothing from her except sighs and short answers. Most of the L&D nurses would ask their patient if it would be alright for a male student nurse to come in and observe. You can only guess what most of the answers were…”No, I don’t think so”. I understand that when it comes to certain procedures, it would be appropriate for a male student nurse to leave or make himself scarce, but if I’m a nurse with a student following me I state that I will have a student with me today to the patient. My last day of clinical I was paired with a great nurse. She was absolutely great. She told the patient who I was and what I was doing. I learned more with my short time with that nurse than I did the entire semester. I really hope that when I get my license that I’ll be able to help students learn what they need to learn.

All in all, I learned a lot this semester (mostly from the lecture classes), but I am glad to be moving on. I am not taking any classes this summer, so I’ve got three months to lounge around and do nothing…..right? Well, I have started on a couple of projects that I’ll discuss next time.

-DV

The Wee Sick Ones

I haven’t posted on this blog since before Christmas. Sorry about that. I have just completed my Pedi/Ob semester. While it really wasn’t my cup-o-tea, it could have been much worse. I started out this semester in the local children’s hospital. Having to see so many very sick little kids is really heartbreaking, but that’s not what I was worried about. I was more worried about the dragon-headed, student nurse-eating, what-do-you-think-you-are-doing-with-my-child parents. I know my wife and let me tell you, I don’t ever want to be the nurse in charge of her child when the child is gravely ill. I get the whole interrogation act when my daughter gets the sniffles here at home. However, to my surprise all of the parents that I met were incredibly understanding of my situation. This included the parents who were nurses themselves and the parent of a child who terribly needed a complete intestinal transplant. My clinical instructor for this section was very tough. While I liked her just fine, many of my colleagues did not. I’m pretty sure that my “B” in clinical was one of the higher grades. In my final evaluation, I was told that I did extremely well. Why the heck didn’t I get an A then?….We missed a couple of days due to the mega ice storm of the century, and I was graded as “just short of becoming independent” due to the acts of God I cannot control, which would have given me an A. I suppose I should have prayed harder.

In the next post I’ll fill you in on where babies come from. Trust me, I know!

Spring 2011 Teaser

Doh....did I forget to blog this semester? Damn, it's almost like I didn't want to remember anything about my OB/Pedi semester. Oh, wait. I don't. Well, not exactly. I was pretty busy trying to make the grade, AND I don't really want to remember too much about this semester. I had my last clinical today in OB. One more lecture tomorrow and a final next week.

I'll post more about this semester later. Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still here.

Time to go pick up the little one from school.

-DV

Adult Med-Surg....Check.

Well, I finally made it. I passed my cardio unit exam with a (yes, you guessed it) a 76. Somehow I don’t seem to be able to get into that B range in this class. That put me needing 75 points to get a B in the class and only needing 25 to keep my C. Today’s final provided me with 51 points. At least I made an A in clinical. I have to admit that this has been the most difficult semester for me ever. That includes all of my “artistic” training years ago. No matter how much I tried, it just seemed that I could not learn all of the knowledge base I needed to know for the application portions of the exams.

I’ve got my course information for next semester (babies and mommies) and my books are on the way. I have a good nursing teacher friend who is able to provide me with free books for next semester…yea! Now if I could just figure out how to use them to benefit my grade. Any study tips from my readers are more than welcome. I’ll be able to get some of the reading done during the Christmas break.

I am looking forward to five weeks of R&R, Review, and Preparation for the next semester.

-DV