Second Week of Nursing School

October 1^st, 2012

To My Second Week of Nursing School,

            This week began with on-campus clinical. Although I was glad that I didn’t have to wake up at 5:00 AM, I would have preferred more off-campus clinical opportunities because I want as much patient exposure as possible. I want to be able to practice communicating with patients and master the skill. For the most part, this week’s on-campus clinical was review for me since I had recently earned my nursing aide certification. Even though I had practiced skills on a dummy in the past, it was still very unusual speaking to the dummy because Professor Latimer acted the voice of the patient. I wish that we had the time to perform the skills individually because it would have given each student the opportunity to speak up. In a real clinical setting, I believe multiple nurses will not simultaneously address the patient, possibly interrupt each other, and in the process overwhelm the patient. In our HAP simulation this week, we were introduced to possible traps when talking to a patient. After the class, I was a bit overwhelmed thinking about how I should properly approach patients and gather health history data without being too methodical and without offending the patient.

            I was going to address my experience in today’s off-campus clinical in my third week journal entry, but I want to write my thoughts and feelings down since they are fresh in my memory. Today, I was assigned to a patient who was admitted to the hospital due to pleural effusion fever. The patient had an AICD placed last week and experienced complications from the procedure that left her feeling anxious. My patient expressed her concern for her fever and her shortness of breath. As the morning progressed, she became increasingly agitated because she kept insisting to the nurses that she was about to pass out and that she wanted to see the cardiologist. When the nurse practitioner was finally notified, my patient’s condition suddenly plummeted. Her blood pressure dropped, while her heart rate became tachycardic, and the healthcare team gathered in her room with the proper equipment in case she coded. Later they moved her to the ICU and I was told by the nurse that the healthcare team believes she went into sepsis. What I learned from this experience, is that healthcare professionals should always treat each patient as a separate case and to always listen to the patient when he/she expresses concern about his/her health.

Goodbye Second Week of Nursing School,

Clos3tGirlyGirl