1-31-2008

Clinicals start next week, so we have Thursday and Friday off this week. But because nursing school is designed for redundancy and pointlessness, we had to spend two hours today in the skills lab doing an interactive DVD on HTN and CHF. That was 08:30, then walked home, puttered around, did some shopping (for supplements, vitamins, etc), went back to campus to eat lunch with my father, more shopping (at the Food Co-op for more supplements), accidentally long nap in the afternoon, dinner, TV, browsing internet. Pretty useless. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive. I had so much planned for today, too!!

1-30-2008 (abdomen book reviews)

Today was Nur363 and Nur360. In 363, we had a quiz on assigned readings on CAD, HTN and cardiac pharmacology, and we had a very brief overview of cardiac pathophysiology. In 360, it was the first day of class, and we went over the syllabus and discussed culture and family systems.

Af
ter class was out, I went to institutional advancement at PSU and talked to the graphic designer about how to desktop publish a booklet/pamphlet, but she wasn't very helpful, so I spent a few hours in the computer lab. The good news is that Microsoft Publisher is trei easy to use to publish booklets if you have a two-sided laser printer.

I wasted most of the evening with TV, then published reviews of about 10 books on abdominal fitness at Amazon (you can read my reviews here). Does that have anything to do with nursing? Well, in two ways, I think so.

First of all, I am of the opinion that nursing has seriously overlooked the importance of exercise science to nurses' knowledge. With the worldwide health problems we have due to abundance of food and leisure, all nurses should
be able to communicate to a patient a basic exercise plan as an integral part of preventive care for CAD, CA, DM2, etc.

Secondly, I got interested in the idea of viral marketing for health knowledge last semester. I thought of a couple ways to do research on this concept at PSU, but I don't have the time resources to pull it off. These Amazon reviews are sort of like viral health education, though. If a buyer goes to several of the main abd books at Amazon and reads my reviews, they will get a little lesson and maybe mini paradigm shift in thinking about fitness. Plus, they'll get directed toward the better books available to them.


Is there much content in abd fitness? Of course, you know that trunk fitness is integral to mobility, and here is a very interesting photo:
This is a photoshopped picture of Oliva and Schwarzenegger (1st and 3rd) from the 1970s posing next to bodybuilders from the 1990s-2000s. Look at the difference in abdominal development that was achieved in those decades. Pretty amazing stuff.
Photo via IronAge.us Virtual Posedown

Morbid Anatomy blog

morbidanatomy.blogspot.com
This blog is fairly well known, I believe, for good reason--a fascinating read.

flesh & gravity blog

fleshandgravity.blogspot.com
There's a lot of personal information about the author's life at this blog, but also there are the occasional interesting posts about anatomy and art from life.

1-29-2008

Well, I guess the lab section of Nur363 is going to be every other week on Tuesday afternoon, with the alternate weeks meeting on Wednesday morning at 08:00. Lab today pretty much consisted of going over blah, blah stuff and meeting some new instructors in the program.

No workout today. I had better make sure I start going to the gym by next week before clinicals start.

1-28-2008 (1st day of class)

Today was the first day of classes for the spring 2008 semester, so it was Nur363 Care of the Adult II and Nur356 Nursing Concepts today. Everything was pretty straight-forward first day of class business.

In Nur363, we started a cardiac lecture and played a little game in which we all drew out of a bag slips of paper with names of cardiac anatomy on them. We were then supposed to line up in order of the flow of blood. Games like this are going to be integrated into the course more this semester based on student feedback from last semester. I guess I am too old or too old-fashioned (or too old skool!) to appreciate wasting time. Oh well.

In Nur356, we watched part of a video on the history of nursing and then had a discussion on what struck us. Somehow, I slid into a discussion of the doctor-nurse relationship and criticized the idea of insubordination. I will have to write more on this in the future, but basically it is an inappropriate paradigm for the hospital and one supported only by habit and the (apparent, based on my experience) propensity for nurses and nursing instructors to like authoritarian relationships. My instructor seemed to have the position that there is collegiality but that this must be tempered by orders. I think this is wrong. Collegiality is a myth when doctors can blow up and yell at nursing staff but not vice versa. That is the behavior of people who are in a vertical relationship, not people who are in different departments of an institution.

spring 2008 schedule

Monday
10:00 Nur363 Hawkins 231
13:00 Nur356 Hawkins 144

Tuesday
13:30 Nur363 Lab Hawkins 231 (Qother week)

Wednesday
08:00 Nur363 Lab Damianos (Qother week)
10:00 Nur363 Hawkins 231
13:00 Nur360 Hawkins 229

Thursday
06:30 clinicals CVPH Medical Center

Friday
06:30 clinicals CVPH Medical Center
14:30 work CVPH

Saturday
14:30 work CVPH

Sunday
14:30 work CVPH

spring 2008 semester

Today marks the beginning of the spring 2008 semester, the third semester of my BSN program at Plattsburgh State University. If one discounts the science co-requisites, my first semester of nursing was spring 2007, when I took Nur303 Fundamentals (in addition to Bio406 Medical Microbiology, which was quite fun).

Then this past fall 2007 semester, I had my first series of real nursing courses, and it was very stressful. These included:
Nur304 Health Assessment
Nur344 Pharmacology
Nur361 Pediatrics
Nur362 Care of the Adult I


This semester I am signed up for:
Nur356 Professional Concepts
Nur 360 Childbearing Family
Nur363 Care of the Adult II


I still need two non-nursing courses--Intro to Psych and Intro to Soc--but I think I need to spend any extra time I have this semester losing some weight and getting my BP and general health back on track. We'll see how that goes. What I really would like to do is to add Ant451 Osteology Seminar!

χαῖρε / about me

revised 4/30/2008

χαῖρε
. Currently subtitled Toward a career in nursing, this weblog is recording my experiences with nursing school, which I hope will come to fruition in spring 2009, when its subtitle will be changed to On a career in nursing and continue with my experiences in practice. Perhaps, if I am successful in academics and unsatisfied in practice, it will become On advanced practice or Toward a terminal degree. But I'll have to see. I have to get through nursing school first.


Who am I? You can call me "Chris," if you want to, for example, send me electronic mail. I'm pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from the State University of New York. I've been in and out of college several times, working on degrees quite different from nursing in humanities and social sciences. My decision for nursing followed my experiences working as a ward clerk on the progressive care/step-down/cardiac unit at my local hospital, a position I hope to keep until I graduate from college.

Contact: I can be reached by electronic mail at the address in my Blogger profile.