The patient I had been working with for the past couple of days was discharged and had left by the time that I made it over to the room where she had been. I was able to follow my new nurse today and get to know some other patients, instead. One of these other patients was a newly diagnosed type II diabetic. Not only was this woman dealing with the new onset of diabetes in her life but she also had a language barrier with the nursing staff on hand and was having difficulty urinating on her own. She was a Spanish speaker that did not understand but a few words here and there that the nurse spoke to her. This patient was going to be discharged with a urinary catheter in place because of her inability to urinate on her own. There was some sort of blockage in her urinary tract that required the special attention of a urologist which would not be available until the following week. Therefore, this poor woman was sent home with a catheter stuck in her bladder and not knowing exactly what was happening. Thankfully, some of her family members made it to her room before she was formally discharged and they were able to help translate the information provided into the patient’s preferred language. The registered nurse responsible for the patient’s discharge was able to find information sheets about diabetes in Spanish, as well, which we were able to give to the patient. Another particular patient from today comes to mind. An older gentleman, probably in his late 80s, was there because of an ankle problem. He and his wife were so open and loving to all those entering the room and offering assistance to the old man. It was admirable. I hope to be so full of love and life at their age. They really helped to make my day today and to them I am grateful.
Today I was placed with another registered nurse that kind of threw me under the bus. I don’t understand what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that these nurses have been at it for so many years that they do not want new nurses to follow them and point out things that they may not be doing correctly according to the most recent research. Maybe they are so set in their ways and prefer to work alone so that they do not get thrown off of what they are doing. It is amazing how much of an impact the assigned nurse can have on the learning experience for a student nurse that is already overwhelmed by all of the new concepts, terminology, and practices that are going on around her. Thankfully, the day got increasingly better and I was able to have some decent conversation with this nurse which allowed her to soften up a little bit and be more accepting of my presence there with her.
The patient I had been working with for the past couple of days was discharged and had left by the time that I made it over to the room where she had been. I was able to follow my new nurse today and get to know some other patients, instead. One of these other patients was a newly diagnosed type II diabetic. Not only was this woman dealing with the new onset of diabetes in her life but she also had a language barrier with the nursing staff on hand and was having difficulty urinating on her own. She was a Spanish speaker that did not understand but a few words here and there that the nurse spoke to her. This patient was going to be discharged with a urinary catheter in place because of her inability to urinate on her own. There was some sort of blockage in her urinary tract that required the special attention of a urologist which would not be available until the following week. Therefore, this poor woman was sent home with a catheter stuck in her bladder and not knowing exactly what was happening. Thankfully, some of her family members made it to her room before she was formally discharged and they were able to help translate the information provided into the patient’s preferred language. The registered nurse responsible for the patient’s discharge was able to find information sheets about diabetes in Spanish, as well, which we were able to give to the patient. Another particular patient from today comes to mind. An older gentleman, probably in his late 80s, was there because of an ankle problem. He and his wife were so open and loving to all those entering the room and offering assistance to the old man. It was admirable. I hope to be so full of love and life at their age. They really helped to make my day today and to them I am grateful.
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This morning I was asked to transfer what was left of my patient’s medication list to the outlined chart from the course materials provided for this week’s care plan. While I completed this task, my assigned nurse for the day somehow got the impression that I was not willing to take part in her patients’ care and visit the rooms with her. This was a big misunderstanding, in my opinion, and I regret not having cleared that up with the nurse myself. The last thing I wanted to do was to appear as if I were not engaged in the clinical experience today. When I initially came up to the floor and met with my nurse for the day, I told her that I was going to fill out a sheet or two with information before I could get started passing morning medications with her. When I then got a chance to follow my nurse around, I think that she suspected me of being reserved after the morning’s incident. This was slightly awkward for me at first but I think I managed to engage her in conversation about the patients by asking about their health statuses, admitting diagnoses, and medication lists; which led to a better communication between the two of us for the remainder of my shift.
I was able to visit with my preferred patient (for care plan purposes) again today. I was able to fill in most of the blanks that I had left behind after yesterday’s shift and got a chance to speak with her about some of the issues that she is facing. I found that this patient’s first priority is to learn better self-health management strategies, especially relating to her diagnosed diabetes. The patient and I talked about some of the things that she thought were important for her to resolve in her own life as well as ways that she could make that difference happen for herself. I was able to advocate for this patient by requesting that a nurse educator specialized in diabetes education come to speak with her about the disease; what it is and how it works, what that means for the patient in her daily life, how she can learn to manage this disease and cope with it, and how she can contribute to bettering her own quality of life. Today I also got to hang my very first intravenous medication via piggy-back (IVPB) on an actual patient. That was a lot more stressful than I thought it would be but I managed to get it done with the guidance of my clinical instructor. I also got to go with another student nurse present on my unit today to watch one of the registered nurses remove a central line from a patient’s jugular vein. Just seeing the catheter’s injection site on a patient’s neck like that is not too bad but when you really start to think about what it means in terms of risks for the patient it becomes a little scary. This patient was a young female, I would assume not much older than me, which felt as though she was not being treated with respect in the hospital and that the healthcare providers’ intentions were not to heal her but rather to make her suffer. Therefore, this patient was getting ready to leave the hospital against medical advice (AMA) and attempt to find another means of coping with her pain. When the registered nurse was preparing the removal of this internal jugular (IJ) catheter from the patient’s neck, the whole concept started to get real for me. This woman has a fairly large diameter catheter threaded into her jugular vein and directly to her heart that she wants taken out, she has a contagious infection, and she is leaving the hospital without adequate reasoning… This cannot possibly end well. But – the catheter came out alright and the patient went on her way. That was a pretty thought-provoking experience for me. Today was a little bit of a difficult day. I was placed with a nurse today that was exceptionally hard to follow. I’m not sure what it was but either she was extremely uncomfortable allowing me to view information about her patients on her computer login or she just did not trust me specifically. I was thrown off by this and was not sure exactly how to act. I continued to follow the nurse to patient rooms and watch her go about her normal activities and she was very hesitant to let me do any of these things alongside her or with her assistance. I will admit that this made me very uneasy and I definitely felt inferior to this nurse because of the behavior that she exhibited towards me on this day. Although, I did notice that she is very good at her job. She tended to her patients’ requests in a timely fashion and treated them all with dignity and respect. In spite of the insecurities that this nurse made me feel I was able to watch her give exceptional care to her patients which made me feel good.
The patient that I chose to complete an assessment on was admitted to the hospital with some sort of a bug bite, supposedly, which had become infected and resulted in an abscess on the patient’s back. This patient not only had the infection to deal with at this time. The patient, a female in her 40s, also has hypertension, liver disease, diverticulitis, a degenerative lumbosacral disc in her lower back, high cholesterol, and ineffectively controlled type II diabetes. I chose this patient for my assessment because of her young age, willingness to talk, spectrum of issues to choose from for my care plan, and her evidently ineffective self-health management techniques. I was able to complete a quick head-to-toe assessment on the patient today and will go back tomorrow morning to fill in the blanks where necessary. Today was another great day of clinical rotation. I got to work with one of the same nurse technicians that I had gotten a chance to meet on the floor yesterday as well as an awesome nurse that allowed me to participate in almost everything he did for his patients throughout the day. I was surprised to find that my assigned nurse was only caring for three patients today. He then informed me that one of his patients was in the hospital for a kidney transplant and that any nurse caring for a patient receiving a transplant may only carry about three patients at that time. This is because only the nurse (no nurse technicians) is allowed to enter the patient’s room for fear of spreading infection to the already compromised patient’s immune system.
As soon as I came up to the floor I got a chance to know a little bit about my nurse’s patients and was able to pick out a good candidate for another head-to-toe assessment. I got a chance to follow the nurse for his morning medication administrations and see how medications are retrieved from the OmniCell (medication storage). One of the patients was slightly aggressive when we came in to give her the morning medications and even refused some of them. The kidney transplant recipient required no assistance from us and was headed home in the early afternoon hours. That left me with an older lady admitted for a gastrointestinal (GI) bleed to complete an assessment on. When I was ready to move on in and perform the head-to-toe assessment on my new patient, my assigned nurse came down to the room with me. I brought my papers and he logged into the computer to simultaneously complete his morning assessment for the patient. As we walked through the computer-based assessment, he allowed me to listen to the patient and compare results with him so that I could complete my own assessment based on the same information that he gathered. I thought it was really neat that he took the time to go through everything with me and provided me feedback whenever I had a question. I greatly appreciate that! |
AuthorThe author is a nursing student that wants to share her journey with other nurses (prospective students, current students, and graduates) while influencing the profession of nursing. By the use of this website, the author has made her own original works available to others seeking examples and study aids in their journeys. The author can be contacted for guidance and/or feedback at readers' discretion. ArchivesTopics
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