I had my first clinical coup today. Last night, I waited too long to study meds and ended up going to bed and crossing my fingers, but today I remembered everything I needed to when questioned. Woo-hoo!
So, yesterday, you will recall, I was left to figure out trach care on my own when I was supposed to be shadowing. Today, the patient was being discharged and the attending nurse had to go to radiology with another patient. So, when the EMTs arrived, there was no nurse to do discharge. I ask my clinical instructor, what should I do? Find the nurse covering for the nurse who left the floor, she says. I do that. The covering nurse says, there's nothing to doing a discharge, just hand them the paperwork. Okay, I say (never having been involved in a discharge before).
As it turned out, there were other complications with the discharge, but what's going on here?
Actually, my major impression from today was of lack of basic nursing skills. I can do the whole meds thing okay, but whenever it comes to turning, standing, bathing, etc, I default to letting whoever is with me take charge of the situation. Which is not good. But at least I know it's a problem.
Next week, hopefully I'll get some patients with tubes and whatnots.
Oh, and the main basic thing I can't figure out is I+Os. I know this sounds stupid, but I don't know how I'm supposed to know when I check and record I+Os and when the aide does this. Part of the problem is that previously the instructors have told us to "do the aide's work" for our patients, which is nice but doesn't let us get practice managing and interacting with aides. I'm going to have to ask someone about this and just accept seeing a dropped jaw and perhaps a red face.
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