come all ye faithful

Let's start off by celebrating my 200th post! I'd like to thank all you who stop by and read my blog. If you've been with me since the beginning and have read my whole blog, can you believe it's 200 posts long? I can't. It's great having the world-wide support from all of you!

It's also been a day, not only that, let's say a week, of firsts. Yesterday during clinicals I witnessed, sort of, my first "nurses eat their young" incident. I say sort of because I only caught the aftermath. It happened so quickly. One of the nurses stopped for one moment at the nurses station only to be chastised by another for "just standing there". The reason she was "just standing there" was because my instructor had taken her medicine cart and was passing meds with some of my fellow students. They had just taken the cart when the nurse stopped for a moment and was talking to some of the other students, and then bitchy-nurse, whomever she was, called her out on "just standing there". Just because the students took your cart doesn't mean you have to just stand there. There are other things to be done. True, very true, but come on. Let's retract the claws and not belittle someone for something you've probably been guilty of yourself! Puhleasse! Tears were shed momentarily from the nurse who was "just standing there", but she soon got over it and went on with her work.

So far I've done accuchecks, insulin injections, PEG tube care, a patient shower, charting, of course vital signs, pulse oximetry, bed-to-geri-chair transfers, unoccupied bed changes, assessments, adult brief changes, care planning, and today I passed my first meds! Because my resident has a PEG tube I have to crush the tablets, so that was fun. One of them didn't crush finely with the crusher so I had to break out the trusty hammer and bash away. Then it was onto the patient where I checked for placement and residual, and administered the meds by gravity.

I'm really enjoying clinicals. So far it's been a great experience. I actually find myself wanting to go back!! This actually astounds me since I was so nervous about not actually liking nursing, if that makes any sense.

Oh, today we had a couple of interesting events. The LTC I am doing my clinicals at has a locked down dementia/alzheimer's unit. One of the CNAs from over there managed to nearly become one of the resident's lunch since the resident tried to take a bite out of her! It was bad enough to where you could see a full circle of teeth impressions, and there was only the tiniest bit of skin breakage. They made a big deal out of the whole situation since they had us students as an audience.

I've been meaning to get over to meet one of my classmate's residents because this person has schizophrenia and bipolar. Evidently this person has been in a manic state. Just last night in the middle of the night she switched and is now delusional claiming that the FBI and others are out to get her. Although I don't plan to go into psych nursing, having a background in psychology, I am intrigued by mental disorders. Now I'm kicking myself for not taking the time to meet her. It would be fascinating to see the differences first-hand.

Well rather than spend anymore of my strained time blogging I should get back to the books!

Tomorrow's the next interview in my hopes of externing over the summer!