clinicals – Imaginary Sunshine

Oh hai, I have a blog?

Michelle — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 02:30:25 +0000

I’m still alive, promise. I’ve been super busy! Since my last post, I was on spring break for a week (where I picked up a week of full time work). My break consisted of homework and work-work. At least I got paid for one of those… But the money is already spoken for, oh well! I have exciting things that I’m doing with the money that I made. Plus I filed my taxes for 2012, and I’m getting a refund (due to putting money into income tax that didn’t need to be put in, grr). You can also find attorney for notices from IRS as they can deal with the matters related to revenue.

A lot of studying has happened, due to the fact that it’s still midterm season. I have one more midterm to go before finals. There’s currently five more weeks of classes. This also means 8 more clinical days(!), which is both exciting and sad. I like clinical, but it’s a lot of work. I still have two more 12-hour shifts at the hospital

I started being able to do IV meds in clinical! I was very nervous. My clinical instructor has drilled into us that when IV meds go wrong, they are very wrong because there is absolutely no way to take it back. So a lot of prep work goes into clinical now for IV meds. There’s a lot of information to consider – what to reconstitute the medication with, what is it compatible with, what is it not compatible with, how fast to give it, what temperature is it stored at, is it already premixed? There’s a lot to consider with IV meds that I never knew that nurses had to consider – that I had to consider. There are a lot more precautions to think about with IV meds than, say, oral medications. But on the fist day that I could give IV meds, I got to give two. Which was two more than some of my clinical group members.

And it’s finally spring around here! Flowers make me happy – the crocuses and daffodils are out and gorgeous. I can’t wait until daisies (June-July) are out because I love them. Love, love, love daisies. But they won’t be out for a bit, so in the mean time I’m enjoying the flowers that are out. Plus the roses in front of my house have started with new leaves, spring is always so much fun. I saw a bumblebee for the first time this year two weeks ago and it made me smile. Warmer weather always means that the insects come out.

Back into the swing of things

Michelle — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:06:21 +0000

And it’s almost like…

I didn’t get a break at all…

Life as a nursing student has been busy! I’ve been busy as the term quickly turned into a lot of work. I just turned in my first paper of the term, I’ve been doing loads of readings every single day, doing research for a presentation (first one of the term – next week!) and just trying to enjoy the process. I’ve had clinical since my last blog entry and I’ve had some wonderful patients so far. I’m really looking forward to getting to do more (removing Foley catheters, nasogastric tubes, IVs/saline locks, pulling out drains) in the coming weeks. This week in lab we’re learning about checking blood glucose so I’m getting my finger pricked tomorrow and I shall see what my glucose levels are at!

It’s the little things in life

Michelle — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 03:21:44 +0000

On the new laptop front:

I’m loving it. I need to do a virus scan on my HP before I go and copy files over and make my Asus my primary computer, but I love it.
It turns on (after being shut down) in 16 seconds, it’ll ‘wake up’ from being in sleep mode in 3 seconds. It’s amazing.
I have all the programs that I love and adore on there right now.
I love having a shut down button (yes, I’m repeating myself from my last post) – that’s how much I adore it.
It’s super light-weight. My HP is well over 7lbs (it has a 12-cell/extended battery instead of a 6-cell battery). My Asus is under 5lbs (2kg!). You wouldn’t think a scant few pounds would make a difference, but my shoulders can tell.
My biggest problem so far is that despite being the same in screen size (technically), it doesn’t fit into the laptop sleeve in my backpack (woe), but it can fit in, if I pop it into a laptop sleeve first and have it in the main area of my bag.

I started school last week and it’s been go-go-go ever since January 7th. It’s term 2 for me. I have some one new-to-me class and the rest are just a level up from last term, which is nice. I’m really making an effort in my class where the students do the teaching by participating and whatnot – it’s hard though, for me, as I’m not a chatty, talkative type (with people that I don’t know well). And as it’s a group (11 students, 1 instructor), and not a small group (2-3), it’s even harder for me. But I’m making an effort, really trying to anyways.

So far classes are going well… I think. There hasn’t been too much for me to be evaluated on yet, I don’t think, so my grades are still in tip-top shape! I think I’m going to enjoy clinical this term. I’m on a general surgery ward (primarily post-op patients). Last term I was on an acute general medicine ward, so it’s pretty interesting to compare and contrast the differences. One of my instructors for clinical skills is my clinical instructor, so he quizzed me a lot in lab today – nice thing to know that I can (hopefully?) make a good impression outside of the hospital! I get my first patient assignment of the term tomorrow afternoon and I’m trying to be proactive in making drug cards for the ‘common’ drugs from the list he had provided (but there’s probably like 50, so I will not be making them all in one go…)

In other news though, I’ve made things! Like socks…

And laminated notes for clinical…

And lastly, I got an all-metal construction 3-hole punch (the only plastic is in the tray that holds all the punched out paper). It may be the best investment I’ve ever made for school. Not only is it fantastic, but it’s so much better than the $2 3-hole punch that I previously had (it was metal and plastic and had holes to fit in a 3-ring binder) and it doesn’t hurt my hands when I try to punch holes into papers. Best thing ever.

One day at a time

Michelle — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 01:57:47 +0000

The new design is coming along slowly as I haven’t had much time at all to work on it. Since the last time that I blogged, I have:

Written a patho midterm (and gotten the mark back – 90%)
Did a presentation (hemiplegia) and did fairly okay
Had some great patients!
Learned alot in school
Wrote a med math test (100%)
Had more clinical ‘firsts’ (bed baths, disposable brief changes)
Written a lot of notes
Fell asleep in one of my patho seminars (and I was doing so well too!)

As for non-school things, I had Clay over last night. He came over for dinner with my sisters and me, which went well. They think he’s nice, everyone was awkwardly quiet and shy. It was nice to have him over though! He’s been super busy since he started school (only three more weeks in his course for him!), and I’ve been super busy too (hello, nursing school). I loved getting to catch up with him as we don’t get to spend a lot of time with one another normally. It’s been getting better though, which has been fantastic. Lots of cuddling occurred, I got him all caught up on my dolls and bug happenings, he caught me up with school and work and other ‘fun’ things like that.

Up next for me is a lot of things. This upcoming week is going to be one of the busiest that I’ve had so far. Not only do I have the usual amounts of readings, I also have two midterms (Monday – Communications and Friday – Clinical Skills Lab), another presentation (Thursday – Hematology), clinical (Tuesday & Wednesday) and a paper endorsement to write (Thursday – shouldn’t be that difficult… I hope). Trying to keep my head above water, I’m really looking forward to this week being over though as the upcoming weekend is a long one! Canadian Thanksgiving is on Monday October 8th, something that I’m quite looking forward to. A four day week? Don’t mind if I do! Except for the fact that I receive my patient assignment on Mondays so I’ll still have research to do – but I won’t have to do readings for my Monday classes that week!

Lots to do this week, here’s to the upcoming weekend where I will hopefully not be spending every waking moment with my nose in a textbook!

A change is coming…

Michelle — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 18:56:17 +0000

All I’ve really blogged about lately is school. School, school, school, clinicals, school.

For some clinical groups from my cohort, they’ve been alternating day shifts and afternoon shifts? My group, not so much. The first week we met up at 9am. It was blissful as I actually got to sleep in (!) as I normally have to be at school at 8:30. After that, we met up earlier (7am). Next week, which is also the first week that we’ll be at the hospital two days a week, is when we get there at 6:30am (or rather, 0630 – everything in military time!) and we get to participate in rounds. I’m excited for it, but also apprehensive. It’s two days a week (!) in clinical, but it also means that we’re kind of “done with” sim lab for this term. The sim lab is great, but I like actually getting to talk to real patients so much more. That said, I still have skills lab, where the dolls aren’t as intricate (no bowel sounds, no heart beats, no pulses, no lung sounds) and cost a lot less. Which is probably why we’re allowed to interact with them without much supervision during open lab time [1. For the clinical skills class, we’re required to do a minimum of 3 hours in the open lab. I’ve done 2.5 so far.].

Two days a week in clinical means:

More patient research to do on Monday nights
I get to be with the same patient for two days in a row
Get to build more of a rapport with my patient, and my assigned nurse

I’m excited thought. Nervous, but oh so excited.

This weekend I’ve done a lot of school work and studying. I finished a paper last week, but took a few days away from it before editing it/proof reading it as best I could before submitting it online. They don’t use TurnItIn (which I hate because it picks up the stupidest phrases and thinks you plagiarized from someone; that and my old school would require us to use TurnItIn twice which means the second time around, it thinks you plagiarized 99% of your paper), which is fantastic. But it’s also this weird uploading system. You upload it, and then you have to press submit again in order for the file to be properly uploaded/sent to the instructor’s inbox. That said, my instructor is a complete and utter failure at using computers. So who knows how long the turn around time for that assignment will be…

But in other news… I did a fishtail braid somewhat successfully on myself while I was taking a study break today. I was shown the fishtail braid over the summer from some friends and didn’t get around to actually looking for a tutorial (videos are helpful!) until this weekend because I wanted to do something with my hair. It’s really long, and I’m really debating on getting it cut. I tie it up and twist it up into a bun most days for clinicals – because no one wants bodily fluids in their hair, least of all me. I love having long hair, but it’s getting to be really long now. It currently hits the small of my back so I’m all “bleh, this takes forever to dry and to comb and to wash and to condition and omg, why do I have a giant matted mess on the back of my head right now?” sometimes. It’s lovely to have long hair, and last time I got it trimmed (4-5″) I had a huge problem with it because it was shorter than I actually anticipated it being and it gave me such a complex. So we’ll have to see what I do about that.

I have my first midterm tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty okay about it. I also have a presentation (!) to do on Thursday, I’m not feeling pretty okay about that at all. I hate public speaking, loathe it deeply. Sadly it’s part of the program and I need to be able to do it somewhat half-assed decently. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll probably blog on Thursday about how horrible it went or something. I hate public speaking, have I mentioned that yet?

I’m working on a new design for Imaginary Sunshine right now. I didn’t really mean to leave this one up for so damn long, but I did and meh, I like it – but I want a change! I’m really considering revamping the site a bit. Most of my ‘content’ will probably be going away, I haven’t really changed much of it and a lot of it was old pages from my blog from before I opened Imaginary Sunshine so it’s all out-dated or written by teenaged-Michelle and not relevant (or funny) anymore. So I’ll see how that goes. I may just archive it all and leave it on, but I’m not entirely sure yet.