Monday, July 9, 2007
Back to the classroom
Tomorrow is the first day of our second semester! Which means this past weekend was our winter break. A whole two days. And I thought the Colby winter break was short:)
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Fluff
I was recently introduced to the wonderful world of Fuffernutter sandwiches. I never had one growing up, but don't really remember ever having the interest to do so. My best friend Diane would eat them all the time. I remember being slightly curious about the mysterious white gooey spread, but not enough to try it on my sandwich. Diane and I did share a liking of Frosted Flakes, and I remember one breakfast at her house before school where she made me laugh so hard that I spat my flakes all over the table.
I was always a PB&J girl. White bread, welch's grade jelly and creamy peanut butter. Later on I would branch out to raspberry jam and crunchy peanut butter. I will even eat it on wheat bread. Shocking, I know. When I went away to Ecuador for a month during my junior year at Colby, we ate a lot of rice and beans. I mean, a LOT of rice and beans. And trout. There was a lot of trout. And this weird starchy root vegetable that if you mashed it and added 865 lbs of butter, it almost kinda slightly reminded you of mashed potatoes. But a lot of time it was just served to us boiled. A big boiled root served over, yep, you guessed it, rice and beans. Naturally by the end of the trip, we were all having major cravings for our favorite foods from back home. Some people were craving pizza, others steak and potatoes. French fries were also popular. Not me. Nope, given a choice of ANY dish in the whole entire world, all I wanted was a peanut butter & jelly sandwich with a BIG glass of milk. Which my awesome mom greeted me with at Logan Airport when we arrived back home.
So although I will always love a good PB& J, I have to admit, Fluffernutters rock.
I was always a PB&J girl. White bread, welch's grade jelly and creamy peanut butter. Later on I would branch out to raspberry jam and crunchy peanut butter. I will even eat it on wheat bread. Shocking, I know. When I went away to Ecuador for a month during my junior year at Colby, we ate a lot of rice and beans. I mean, a LOT of rice and beans. And trout. There was a lot of trout. And this weird starchy root vegetable that if you mashed it and added 865 lbs of butter, it almost kinda slightly reminded you of mashed potatoes. But a lot of time it was just served to us boiled. A big boiled root served over, yep, you guessed it, rice and beans. Naturally by the end of the trip, we were all having major cravings for our favorite foods from back home. Some people were craving pizza, others steak and potatoes. French fries were also popular. Not me. Nope, given a choice of ANY dish in the whole entire world, all I wanted was a peanut butter & jelly sandwich with a BIG glass of milk. Which my awesome mom greeted me with at Logan Airport when we arrived back home.
So although I will always love a good PB& J, I have to admit, Fluffernutters rock.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Falling into place
Today was a great day at clinicals. For the first time, all the many pieces of the puzzles were falling into place. Rather than each student providing part of the care for our own individual patient, 3 of us got to shadow our clinical instructor while she provided full care for three students. So while each of us still had our own patient, we got to see how an actual nurse would go about prioritizing patients needs, delegating, making decisions etc. It was a really good experience. Plus we got to view a lot more procedures that if we would have only been caring for our own patient. We got to participate in a blood transfusion, and I even learned how to flush a central IV line. Pretty cool stuff.
The best part, by far, was getting to see the big picture. And most importantly I saw how absolutely amazing and rewarding nursing is, and how much I am absolutely going to love it.
Tomorrow is the last day of our first clinical rotation. And we all got to choose a specialty outside of medsurg that we were interested in shadowing. So tomorrow I am going to shadow in the Emergency Department. Because my current hospital is smaller, it will be a great place to get introduced to how the ER operates. For me I think it will be a bit more manageable first step into emergency medicine than at big city ER where there will be multiple major traumas coming in every second (and explosions and helicopter chopping off surgeon's arms like on the show ER:)
The best part, by far, was getting to see the big picture. And most importantly I saw how absolutely amazing and rewarding nursing is, and how much I am absolutely going to love it.
Tomorrow is the last day of our first clinical rotation. And we all got to choose a specialty outside of medsurg that we were interested in shadowing. So tomorrow I am going to shadow in the Emergency Department. Because my current hospital is smaller, it will be a great place to get introduced to how the ER operates. For me I think it will be a bit more manageable first step into emergency medicine than at big city ER where there will be multiple major traumas coming in every second (and explosions and helicopter chopping off surgeon's arms like on the show ER:)
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Happy 4th of July everyone!
I am very excited because fireworks are legal in CT. You can actually get them at Stop & Shop!!! And so we did! And I am very excited to let them off tonight once it gets dark.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Clinicals in a Nutshell
So a lot has gone on these last two weeks that I had not been able to keep everyone informed of.
I am almost through my first clinical rotation! I started last Wednesday and it has been an exciting, terrifying, educational and satisfying experience. We all arrived at the hospital on Wednesday morning looking like deer stuck in the headlights. All of a sudden, all the "practice assessments" were being done on real patients, and our results becoming part of their official medical record. Scary! Mr. Injectipad suddenly had a face (and arms and legs etc that we could provide privacy for.) It was all exhilarating, nerve-wracking and intense. But I had a great first patient who was very agreeable, and didn't laugh too hard when I couldn't figure out how to operate the hospital bed (or the bedside table). It was funny, all the things that I thought we going to be challenges for me, I soared right through, while the little details I didn't even think twice about in class were much more difficult. Most difficult has been getting up at 5:15AM every morning (you all know how much I LOVE mornings:) The days have been VERY long. We have done 12 hours shifts at the hospital, followed by at least 2 hours of "homework" while we complete our daily care plans for our patients. But so far I have received good feedback from my clinical instructor, the staff nurses, and the patients. We had a mini evaluation today with our instructor, and she told me that me biggest weakness is that I need to stop being so hard on myself. Apparently I do NOT need to know absolutely everything after only 4 days in the hospital.
We thankfully have a couple days off which I plan to spend sleeping as much as possible. (And trying to get a jump start on the reading for our next course.) They (the teachers) are absolutely insane. We are in class for 10 hours a day, and then are supposed to go home and read 500 pages of textbook material. A night. So I am going to try to use the time as productively as possible. But also try to have some fun time for me so I don't go insane. A happy medium: I am going to lug my gynormous Med-Surg textbook to the beach tomorrow:)
And more kudos to Jane who has put up with a very cranky Julie, my snooze alarm starting at 5:00AM, and nightly laundering of my scrubs.
PS Niknup just climbed in my lap and said to say hello to everyone.
I am almost through my first clinical rotation! I started last Wednesday and it has been an exciting, terrifying, educational and satisfying experience. We all arrived at the hospital on Wednesday morning looking like deer stuck in the headlights. All of a sudden, all the "practice assessments" were being done on real patients, and our results becoming part of their official medical record. Scary! Mr. Injectipad suddenly had a face (and arms and legs etc that we could provide privacy for.) It was all exhilarating, nerve-wracking and intense. But I had a great first patient who was very agreeable, and didn't laugh too hard when I couldn't figure out how to operate the hospital bed (or the bedside table). It was funny, all the things that I thought we going to be challenges for me, I soared right through, while the little details I didn't even think twice about in class were much more difficult. Most difficult has been getting up at 5:15AM every morning (you all know how much I LOVE mornings:) The days have been VERY long. We have done 12 hours shifts at the hospital, followed by at least 2 hours of "homework" while we complete our daily care plans for our patients. But so far I have received good feedback from my clinical instructor, the staff nurses, and the patients. We had a mini evaluation today with our instructor, and she told me that me biggest weakness is that I need to stop being so hard on myself. Apparently I do NOT need to know absolutely everything after only 4 days in the hospital.
We thankfully have a couple days off which I plan to spend sleeping as much as possible. (And trying to get a jump start on the reading for our next course.) They (the teachers) are absolutely insane. We are in class for 10 hours a day, and then are supposed to go home and read 500 pages of textbook material. A night. So I am going to try to use the time as productively as possible. But also try to have some fun time for me so I don't go insane. A happy medium: I am going to lug my gynormous Med-Surg textbook to the beach tomorrow:)
And more kudos to Jane who has put up with a very cranky Julie, my snooze alarm starting at 5:00AM, and nightly laundering of my scrubs.
PS Niknup just climbed in my lap and said to say hello to everyone.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Punch Duck Love
For last Sunday’s exam, they asked the students to arrive at least an hour before their scheduled “appointment” because they usually run way ahead of schedule. Although we were 15 minutes to perform each skill, usually the students don’t need the full allotted time and so things move quickly.
So when I arrived at 10A for my 11A time slot, I was greeting by a gaggle of white lab coat garbed students and told they were running WAY behind schedule. At that point, none of the10a students had gone. At first I was grateful for the extra time to review my notes one last time. Periodically I would steal a look around the room to see how the other students were using this time. I think it would be an interesting sociological study to be in a room with a bunch of accelerated nursing students waiting to take an exam. We are a strange strange bunch.
Some sat in the big comfy chairs silently rocking and muttering to themselves, occasionally letting out an expletive when they realized they had forgotten a step. Others quietly paced the room making large circular gestures with their arms. Others stood in the corner silently acting out the motions of a dressing change like a crazed nurse/mime.
Frustrated that we were trapped inside on a gorgeous Sunday morning, a few of us decided to take our mutterings outside. We looked out over the expansive green lawn surrounding the health science building and were treating by the site of a momma duck walking proudly across the lawn followed by a little baby duck, waddling back and forth, his short little legs struggling to keep up. Papa duck took up the rear looking surveying the scene for signs of danger. The little family got 1/2 way across before they got a look at us and decided to return to the safety of the bushes. (They apparently had no desire to receive a dressing change. Kinda like that scene from One Crazy Summer when the boy scout troupe finds John Cusack lying in the sand dunes and they cry out “SAVE HIM” and in the next scene he is covered mummy-like with gauze and bandages and slings.)
As time wore on, our anxiety slowly turned to agitation. “I could have slept another 45 minutes!” exclaimed one student. Sleep is rare and precious item. “The more I sit here, the more I am going to psyche myself out” exclaimed another. “I am so stressed right now, I want to punch something!” said a student sprawled across a table. “I am so stressed, I could punch a baby!” said another. So I said, “let’s go get that duck!” Then we all laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. I clarified that I was indeed only joking about wanting to punch the little baby duck, and they all laughed and said, “Oh really Julie, cuz we thought you were serious.”
You all know how I did on the exam, but I wanted to add one last item about the day. So after completing the skills, the instructor, Professor Love, told me that I was going to be a great nurse. She said, “You have a great manner about you. You are very business-like and efficient and competent in your skills, but you also manage to have a very calming and pleasing manner. I don’t know how you are feeling on the inside, but on the outside you are very soothing.” She then asked if I had thought about what specialty I was interested in. I told her that I still wasn’t sure, having absolutely no and wanted to approach each field with an open mind. Then I told her that I would welcome any feedback from the staff, if they thought that based on skills they thought I was better at than others, and/or based on my personality, if they thought there was a specialty I was more suited for. I told her I was possibly thinking about OR nursing, and she said “Oh no…you need to be with patients who are awake. You will be excellent with them.” She asked if I had ever though about nursing midwifery. She said if she ever had a baby, she would want someone like me to be her midwife. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
So when I arrived at 10A for my 11A time slot, I was greeting by a gaggle of white lab coat garbed students and told they were running WAY behind schedule. At that point, none of the10a students had gone. At first I was grateful for the extra time to review my notes one last time. Periodically I would steal a look around the room to see how the other students were using this time. I think it would be an interesting sociological study to be in a room with a bunch of accelerated nursing students waiting to take an exam. We are a strange strange bunch.
Some sat in the big comfy chairs silently rocking and muttering to themselves, occasionally letting out an expletive when they realized they had forgotten a step. Others quietly paced the room making large circular gestures with their arms. Others stood in the corner silently acting out the motions of a dressing change like a crazed nurse/mime.
Frustrated that we were trapped inside on a gorgeous Sunday morning, a few of us decided to take our mutterings outside. We looked out over the expansive green lawn surrounding the health science building and were treating by the site of a momma duck walking proudly across the lawn followed by a little baby duck, waddling back and forth, his short little legs struggling to keep up. Papa duck took up the rear looking surveying the scene for signs of danger. The little family got 1/2 way across before they got a look at us and decided to return to the safety of the bushes. (They apparently had no desire to receive a dressing change. Kinda like that scene from One Crazy Summer when the boy scout troupe finds John Cusack lying in the sand dunes and they cry out “SAVE HIM” and in the next scene he is covered mummy-like with gauze and bandages and slings.)
As time wore on, our anxiety slowly turned to agitation. “I could have slept another 45 minutes!” exclaimed one student. Sleep is rare and precious item. “The more I sit here, the more I am going to psyche myself out” exclaimed another. “I am so stressed right now, I want to punch something!” said a student sprawled across a table. “I am so stressed, I could punch a baby!” said another. So I said, “let’s go get that duck!” Then we all laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. I clarified that I was indeed only joking about wanting to punch the little baby duck, and they all laughed and said, “Oh really Julie, cuz we thought you were serious.”
You all know how I did on the exam, but I wanted to add one last item about the day. So after completing the skills, the instructor, Professor Love, told me that I was going to be a great nurse. She said, “You have a great manner about you. You are very business-like and efficient and competent in your skills, but you also manage to have a very calming and pleasing manner. I don’t know how you are feeling on the inside, but on the outside you are very soothing.” She then asked if I had thought about what specialty I was interested in. I told her that I still wasn’t sure, having absolutely no and wanted to approach each field with an open mind. Then I told her that I would welcome any feedback from the staff, if they thought that based on skills they thought I was better at than others, and/or based on my personality, if they thought there was a specialty I was more suited for. I told her I was possibly thinking about OR nursing, and she said “Oh no…you need to be with patients who are awake. You will be excellent with them.” She asked if I had ever though about nursing midwifery. She said if she ever had a baby, she would want someone like me to be her midwife. That made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Technical Difficulties
BIG apologies to everyone for the lack of posts this week. We were having internet problems and did not have access all week. I have a lot of catching up to do!!
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