Act I Scene 1: Hospital Room

This will be short as it is after midnight, and I still have to finish studying to tomorrow's big exam. Today in lab we had a lecture about the wonderful world of ostomy bags. Actually it was more like a whirlwind drive-by lecture so they could give us more time reviewing the skills for the practical. Tomorrow, when performing a wound dressing change, I will remember to open up my sterile biohazard bag BEFORE I remove the bandage. Doing these practicals is tricky. It's like...I know how to perform all the actual skills (preparing and administering the injection, administering meds via nasogastric tube) but in addition to performing them, we need to verbalize certain things in a certain order that we would do in real life with real patients, but can't do in lab with the dummys. Things like "assists patient back to comfortable position". It's hard to remember to do that when the "patient's" leg comes off when you move it into the correct position for the injection. So it's a lot like learning a script for a play set in a hospital.

Fortunately, it is pass/fail tomorrow, and we only need to get a 75 on each skill to pass. But if you mess up on something major like breaking sterile field, or administering the wrong dose, you loss an automatic 25 points. So then if you mess on on something minor (like forgetting to SAY "I would be sure to provide adequate pricacy for the patient") you would fail. But towards the end all the instructors kept telling me "You know you are going to do fine tomorrow, right?" as I asked them to observe my technique for the 32nd time. So I guess I should feel good about that.

Okay, I said this was going to be short...but I lied. Back to my nasogastric tubes...