Getting Experienced

Last week was full of many new experiences during my clinical days. We were back at St. Thomas hospital on the cardiac rehab floor, where we care for pt's who are 1-6 days post-op open heart surgery. This rotation has been more exciting for me than many of the others I have had. I am getting to do and see things that I came back to school for. At times it seems that life has been so full of all the things I need to learn, that I lose sight of the big picture and forget my end goal. The small things in the meantime are foundational cornerstones to major principles in the future, but at times they feel more like annoying stones in my shoes. So, this St. Thomas rotation has been incredibly encouraging. I had the exciting new opportunity last week of giving someone a suppository. It is quite odd to find yourself 4 inches into someone's rectum, but that is just part of it. Unfortunately, the suppository didn't work. This led me to the new opportunity of giving someone an enema, actually before it was all over with I gave two to the same poor soul. At times however, an individual may be so impacted that even an enema won't work. This leads to one final option - the digits. My digit to be exact. 10 minutes later the pt was feeling much better and I was able to give her the 2nd enema, which she still needed. On a brighter and more exciting note, I started an IV line on my first attempt, luckily the pt had very good veins and I got a good stick. The pt even said they didn't feel a thing. This was good, especially since the pt kept shaking a fist at me and smiling. I also got to take out a sutured in centrally inserted IV line. The only difficulty associated with this was the extreme amount of tape I had to peal off the pt in order to even get to the surgical site. Overall the two days last week were fun, tiring, educating, and interesting. I appreciated my time there greatly.

This week, we will unfortunately only be able to spend one day in clinical. Our other day of clinical will be spent at the state Capital for TNA day. This is the Tennessee Nurses Association day on the hill. We will spend time with the governor, network with nursing school all over the state, listen to new legislation, and talk with congressmen and lobbyists.

Overall it should be a good learning experience, but I'd rather be in clinical. Fortunately, it only affected our short day of clinical and not our long 12 hour day.

Overall things are going well with school. This semester ends in three weeks and then I will have 4 days off before summer semester starts.