So, this was clinical day 1 in the med/surg setting. I was very excited, because I'm at a different hospital than last time, and as if that wasn't exciting enough, I am on the telemetry floor! That means, I am in the right place to be able to see an open heart surgery (although I realize the likelihood of this is very slim).
By the end of the day, I was exhausted. I hate that feeling, because it really isn't that I'm doing anything that is extremely physical or anything.
Most of the day today was spent listening to our instructor tell us everything we needed to know and more. We spent 2 hours in an empty patient room reviewing how to move the bed, how to set a bed alarm, what is in the medication drawers in the patient rooms, and lots of other things. If I'm being honest, it felt like it was clinical day 1 in term 1... or at least how it should have felt. Lots of hand-holding by this particular instructor.
It probably would have been nice to have had someone walk us through everything at the very first clinical of the year, but at this point in the game, I'm pretty sure I know most of the equipment in the med drawer (i.e. needles, cups, gauze, etc.). Also, I think I did pretty well last term with just being thrown into it and being forced to learn, so perhaps because it was what I was used to, it was what I was expecting.
Oh, and I should mention that she made us watch some of the patient education videos that are available in the rooms for the patients. Wow.
In any case, after the two hours we spent in a rapidly warming patient room, we took a tour of this particularly huge hospital, with our instructor telling us about areas that are, for now, irrelevant to us. We eventually made our way to the learning center. And sat for another 2 hours or so discussing her expectations for the term from us and telling us about herself and the hospital network. We were then excused for lunch for an hour, and then reconvened to received patient assignments for the last hour and a half of the day.
The instructor then advised us to log on at our respective nurse's stations to make sure we could get into the computer systems. With the last hour, the instructor accompanied me and one other student for doing patient assessments. I had to go first, because the patient I was assigned was getting discharged that afternoon.
And then I went home and took a nap.
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