Group projects, Maternity Clinicals

Well, it's been an interesting week! The last post was the day before my first clinical experience on the Maternity flooor. I got lucky and it was my day in the NICU!!! It was amazing. The babies on that floor have the most heart in the whole hospital. There were twins, one was 1 lb 4 oz. and the other was 1 lb 7 oz. The legs are the width of a finger and they only get fed 1 cc of breastmilk. They are amazing! The one may have to get surgery to fix an open ductus arteriosis, which is supposed to close when the baby is born, but has stayed open since the babies were born at 25 weeks. I watched the nurses care for the babies and they were so skilled. It really made me want to work in the NICU. The babies are cared for in some of the same ways as the adults are, they get suctioned, NG tubes, constantly moniored VS, etc. The hospital has a highly skilled NICU, so all the babies that are high risk go there. We are very lucky to have the experience of doing our rotation there. So, I guess you've figured out I really like it. Tomorrow, I get to go to either labor and delivery or the postpartum unit. Very excited!!
There was a story inserted here, which I took out, I didn't realize anyone actually read this thing that wasn't a previous work employee :) I shouldn't single people out on the internet so while everything was the truth, I'm deleting it.

Friday we did a physical assessment video that took all day. We got there at 9 in the morning and organized everything until 12, got lunch, and then taped. It took til 5 in the afternoon. My partner's friend passed away so she was kinda out of it and everytime you put the camera on, I would start cracking up. It was a hot mess :) But, it's done, and thank goodess! No more videos for the rest of the semester. This one is a whole grade for the physical assessment class, though, so hopefully we hit on all of the points and got an A.
Well, the test is coming up on Monday so 6 days left. Wish me luck! Have to go study now. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to write again this week!
Lots of Blessings!
Mary

Spring Break is Over - Back to Reality

Well, the heat has been turned back on! The good news is that I have everything completed that I need to have turned in for the next two weeks. The bad news is that the teacher that we have for the first half of the information is done on Thursday @10 and the teacher that I really have a hard time concentrating on is starting @ 11. I really like my teacher right now, she is straight to the point about what is important and doesn't go off on long tangents. Oh, well. Can't have everything you want, right? So I was up at 5 and I stll have some Miller CDs to watch. For those of you who have never heard of Miller CDs - They are tutorials that go through many different topics. For example, Reproduction is what we are doing now. The woman teaches different segments about 20 minutes each on different topics. They also come with a thick stack of review questions. My school has them on hand for us to borrow. Anyway, they seem to be helpful and NCLEX questions are always great tools. Just a little aside, for anyone who is taking the NCLEX in 2010 like me, the questions are going to be changed and re-evaluated. It was announced at the NJSNA (Student Nurse's Association) convention at one of the reviews. So the importance of that is you will probably want to take an Nclex review because those are the people who study exactly what % of the questions are on certain topics. Then they teach a review concentrating on those areas but giving a broad review of all areas.
SO tomorrow I start on the Maternity floor. I will be in the nursery all day and so to prepare for newborn assessment, I reviewed all the video clips of newborns in my physical asssessment class. I am really excited! I wanted to go into nursing because of the experience I had giving birth to James (If you haven't read it, it's in August 2008 and named This is th Reason) and to get back to the place I started is really going to be a validation of why I'm working so hard. That's the theory, anyway. One of the clinical days when we arrive, our instructor will tell us it's our day in the NICU, so any day I could be going there. I'll have to tell ya how that turns out tomorrow :) Doesn't mattter though, I'll be playing with babies all day! I can feel good energy acomin'!
So we had clss from 8-10 this morning, a concept map class (we have to learn a whole new way to do them) from 10-11, and a physical assessment class from 11-1. Then my friend and I helped another girl with her concept map. tried to watch the CDs at school and then came home. Once I got here I straightened, made dinner, got the kids in their PJs, watched the videos for newborns, and now ot's time for Miller CDs again. No wonder I'm pooped. It's been a long day! To any future nursing students, get used to regular infusions of coofee!
Lots of Blessings!
Mary

Papers, Concept Maps, Case Studies

Good afternoon! I'm in the middle of cooking dinner and I thought I would get a quick post in. Nursing school never fails to amaze me. When you are getting ready for it, it seems so overwhelming how much you do BEFORE you start the actual nursing classes. When you're actually doing the classes, it's just a never-ending list of to-do's. The reason I bring this up is that I was reading another blog about how nervous people are before they start applying to nursing schools. I'll admit, I didn't go through that because I had an epiphany and knew this is what I was supposed to do. But, a word of advice, when you actually get here it's just busy. Not Oh-my-God-I'll-never-make-it-through hard, just really busy. Some of the information is difficult, don't let me fool you, but it becomes a long list of things that you check off as done. If I looked at my whole semester and what I had to get done, I would have a stroke! I need to take one section at a time. Mostly, one test at a time. Then I break down all the assignments I have to turn in , do all the notecards (flashcards) for the info I need to know, and then I study. I think most of the info is definitely able to be learned, I think you just need to keep focused, let some steam off a couple of times a semester, and remember what you're doing it for. This spring break I have done OB math problems, reading, a communications paper, concept maps, milestones for a physical assessment class, and listened to my lecture on my iPod. It sounds like a lot but I paced myself and by Sunday night, I'll be prepared for the next two weeks. But in those two weeks, I'll be completing things like my notecards for the next test. If you keep up with the work, it will not overwhelm you, but if you get behind it is very difficult to dig your way back to tbeing on top of your work.
So, in closing, nusing school is hard. It takes time away from your social life and family life. If you keep up with it, you can find amazingly rewarding experiences at every clinical day. Even when you feel stressed and tired, those days when you help people or when you learn something you've never done before more than make up for the amount of time you put into it. Hope this helps someone someday :) Lots of Blessings, Mary

Spring Break

Hi all! I haven't been on here in so long and so much has happened, I don't know where to start. Right now, I'm on Spring break so I have a little time. You may wonder why I didn't write when I had a month off for Christmas. Well, the answer to that one is pretty simple. My house was so disgusting that if it didn't get cleaned and straightened out, I would have moved out leaving my husband and children all by themselves. And yes, it took me a month. Very simple answer right? Anyway, I miss writing about the craziness of nursing school. So much has changed in my life though, so let me start there. Jamie's business is blessed everyday. He has been supporting us all by himself since August and we have been so thankful that he can. Our little Rosie had puppies! They're quite a handful but in a couple of weeks they will be able to go to their own homes. The little white one is going to my mom and we're thinking about keeping the black and white one. She's too cute to let go. Hold any judgements about having another dog in this home, please. Nothing anyone can say could be worse than the reaming out I'm giving myself :) Jamie and I are going back to court to try and get custody of Syd, so we may be looking at a new dog and a teenage addition to this home. I can feel the bulging seams as I sit here. But thank God, all the same, life is good. Nursing school life is a totally different story, and that's what this blog is about, right?
We are a little over halfway done our second semester, and it's about as insane as you can get. The first semester was hard, really hard, but this semester will break a person's will. The first test was so hard they threw out 6 questions. This test they threw out another 6. It's unbelievable! We had this past test's material taught by 1 teacher. The difficult part of that is the teacher is very hard to understand. What she teaches you is, mostly, on the test but in a different sense then how she taught it. They added on an additional clinical day and an additional class. So the past 6 weeks of clinical and school have been like this
Monday 8-10 class 10-11 lecture Get patient and do care plan until 1 in the morning
Tues - Clinical til 3:30 Tweak care plan for following day
Wends - Clinical til 3:30 Pass out dead
Thurs - Class 9-12
Friday - meet at school to try to figure out what the hell happened to us this week

It's been a blast. We were on an Oncology floor for clinical and there were some great learning opportunities. It was aweful though because the nurses hated us and wouldn't teach us. I would have thought maybe I was reading them wrong and it was just me, but my clinical instructor by the end was telling our school to never send a clinical group to that floor again. I had good experiences, though. I suctioned a tracheostomy patient, cleaned a trach, did a dressing change, did a dressing change for a central catheter (big deal because if you do it wrong the patient could get an infection go straight to the heart), took out a Foley catheter, and learned to work independently. It was very rewarding to have confidence in my clinical skills now.
We're now in Maternity, and the rest of the semester should fly by. We no longer have to get our patients because we won't know who is going to have a baby. Monday night I will be able to SLEEP!!!!! Yay! We are going to do a couple of twelve hour days so we only need one clinical day that week, the following day we have off. We also have to work on a presentation for clinical which should be interesting. Our clinical group has many different personalities to say the least. This should take a lot of patience.
I thought Maternity would be easy for the lecture but it's not turning out to be so easy. We have a little while before the test, though so I'm going to wait until it's closer to freak out. This week is going by way too fast, I need to get working on my list of to-dos. It was so nice to vent on here again, it made me realize why I did it to begin with. Now, I am off to tackle some nursing stuff. Hopefully, I will begin to have a little more wiggle room and post here again.
Lots of Blessings!!
Mary