No, really - what is your EMERGENCY?

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T20:51:00.000-04:00

Nick F., Jamie E., Megan M., Joe M.

So darn slow

2009-05-24T16:55:00.002-04:00

I think someone needs to explain the term Emergency to some of our doctors. In my job, we see just enough patients that we should be busy most of the time but no one should really be waiting in the waiting room. The majority of the patients are non-acute and really could be in and out pretty quick. Even the acute patients are not that difficult and are usually consulted on pretty quick so the ED docs can move on. We don't have many med students or residents so we don't have to wait for that entire process to play out either.

Bottomline: Patients should not feel like they have to leave without being seen by a doctor after sitting in a room in the ED for 4 hours. That is not 4 hours in the waiting room, that is 4 hours inside the ED because there are plenty of rooms for the patients to go to - we are rarely full for very long.

Its Ok.

2009-05-13T22:12:00.002-04:00

So, I've started my new job. It's Ok. Lots of the same issues as my last job but a slightly different clientele. And hey, it is nice to be paid more, work slightly less, and get free parking! I'm still getting used to the fact that my 2 years of Emergency experience makes me one of the more experienced people there.

Back from the Dead

2009-04-16T23:25:00.002-04:00

My last weekend shift at Big City ED ended up being one of my most interesting. I was given a patient early in the day who was a chronic alcoholic and was having some GI bleeding. Her hematocrit was very low - low enough to get a super quick, non-crossmatched blood transfusion. So, I had two large bore IV's in her, had her on the cardiac monitor and was transfusing blood in the course of about 15 minutes after her arrival in the ED.

Things went from bad to worse. The patient ended up intubated, scoped, and then decided to code. We worked on her for 25 minutes and then ultrasounded her heart and had no cardiac activity. Her husband was in the room and the ED attending broke the news to him. As I was turning off pumps and trying to kind of get her a little more presentable, I looked down and SHE WAS BREATHING ON HER OWN!!! We had been changing the paper roll in the cardiac monitor and darn if she didn't pop up in a normal sinus rhythm. So basically after 25 mintues of CPR and meds, shocked 6 times and probably 2 minutes of doing nothing this woman came back to life! We got her to the ICU and she was hanging in there.

I went up to check on her three days later and she had been extubated and was up and reading a book. HOLY COW! Apparnetly no neuro damage (go CPR) and she was breathing on her own. Crazy.

Yep - this is a new post!

2009-04-16T23:14:00.002-04:00

So, I'm contemplating changing the name of the blog now that I have been doing this for a year and a half. I've precepted two cycles of new grads at this point so I don't really consider myself a new grad anymore. I'm thinking just Pissed Off Nurses or Pissed Off ED Nurses but that sounds a bit redundant since I have yet to meet an ED Nurse who isn't pissed off.

Big news at Big City ED! Last summer my hospital decided they did not want travelers in the ED anymore so they hired 12 New Grads and 2 new ER nurses at one time. What the hell were they thinking? Basically the 2 new ED nurses are great, they did wonderful since they were already nurses they just needed some ED experience. Now 11 of the 12 new grads came off orientation on the same day (one couldn't cut it in the ED). It has been horrible. There have been some night shifts where the entire staff other than the Charge nurse and the Triage nurse came off orientation within in the past month or so. This has resulted in much discontent among the "old" staff. So much so that 4 of us have moved on to other hospitals. Yep, that is right - I have left Big City ED and moved on. So, I'm sure that I will have more new and exciting stories from Slightly Smaller ED.

One Year In

2008-07-08T21:05:00.003-04:00

So, I have officially been a registered nurse for a year. I can't believe it has been a year, since I really don't feel any different than I did a year ago!

So after a year, I have realized a few things:

1. I could never be a med-surge floor nurse. You guys must have the patience of saints. We board a lot of admitted patients in our ED - that is tough work.

2. I don't think anyone has or goes to a doctor's office. I'm confused about why I can never get an appointment - they clearly aren't seeing patients - they are sending them all to the ED.

3. I don't like management.

4. Travelers are great to fill out your staff but they are the most complaining bunch of people I have ever met.

5. Please do everything you can to control your diabetes or not develop it. If I see one more infected to the bone toe I will vomit.

6. 27 years old is far too young to be on the liver transplant list because of alcoholic induced cirohsiss.

7. Med students are annoying as all get out - especially in July.

8. I like Urgent Care - use it, please.

9. I love both Haldol and Ativan.

10. I find many days I am working for my fellow nurses and not necessarily for my patients. I feel stronger about showing up to make sure my workmates don't have to work harder than normal than I feel about showing up for my patients. There is probably something wrong with that, but as long as I keep showing up and doing my part, I guess it doesn't matter what gets me there.

That is all.

Gobble, gobble

2007-11-22T20:18:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I did not have to work, but I do have to work all of this weekend, so no shopping for me. Oh well, I don't have any money anyway!

Good Day

2007-11-12T19:41:00.001-05:00

I worked yesterday. It was a good day in the ED. Not super busy, but not totally slow either. We had a whole lot of kids - it is croup season - fun. I did start an IV on a 4 month old. My first time and I got it on the first try. Probably beginners luck, but I was pretty happy.

I also had, for the first time, one of our frequent fliers. This patient is actually very ill and so is one of the ones that you don't mind coming in repeatedly. So my preceptor is giving me the background info, yet leaves out one important piece of info: this patient is deaf. I didn't know that and I go in there talking to this patient and I get a look that equates to "you are really, really not very smart." But hey, I was also armed with Dilaudid and Phenergan - so I'm pretty sure I was forgiven!

Belated

2007-11-12T19:38:00.000-05:00

I apologize for my tardiness on both of these occassions:

Happy 232nd Birthday to the US Marine Corps! 10 Nov 2007

Thank you to all of our Veterans - 11 Nov 2007

Final Exam Tomorrow

2007-11-08T19:57:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the final exam for my critical care class. There are not too many things that I have been less motivated to do. I did, however, get paid to study for 4 hours today. So, one of the girls that started with me has been fired from the ED. She did not pass the midterm or the makeup midterm which was a stated requirement for staying in the ED. True to form, the management handled the whole thing in the most inappropriate manner possible. I wouldn't have even fought to stay in the ED (she did) if they had treated me that way. It will be tough for me to ever respect these people again. I will not make waves over this because there are enough personnel issues in the ED right now, I think it would be counterproductive on everyone's part to make a stink. However, if things don't change for the better, I doubt I will stay where I am longer than a year or two. The main reason for staying that long is that I would lose my signing bonus if I left before a year. But also, I feel like I need to stay at least that long in one place in order to really solidify my skills before moving on. Besides, like I said in my last post - I really like the people I work with and honestly, I'm new and can avoid the management fairly well.

So, my ED has some serious personnel issues. We actually have more travel nurses than staff nurses. This means that the bulk of our workforce does not actually work for my hospital and they only stay 13 weeks at a time. Good things - they are experienced and bring in new perspectives. Bad things - they complain all the time, they come and go quickly. Well, this staff shortage came to a head the other night. I was on a 7a-7p shift with my preceptor and it was a good thing there were two of us. Somewhere along the way, we ended up with 3 ICU admits (no room in the ICU, they stay with us), a ruptured ectopic pregnancy (very sad, been trying to get pregnant for years), and another vag bleed. This is a lot to have in the ICU. And the waiting room was starting to really back up. Everyone was swamped with no kidding actually sick people. Not the usual overload of not really sick enough for the ED people that we normally get. We had like 2 or 3 rule out strokes, chest pains, amputated fingers, broken bones, guy who ended up with a ventriculostomy (drainage tube in the brain). Needless to say it was crazy and we were getting overwhelmed. Shift change comes around and the nurse educator (I'll blog about this idiot later - she gets her own entry) decides she needs to get into the patient assignment business (wrong answer, this is the charge nurse's job) and pisses everyone off. Pisses them off to the point that no one will take my last patient. I ended up staying late because no one would take my patient. I really didn't mind staying, but the thing that pissed me off was that they were trying to make a point but they would never stay late in the morning when we come in. So, selfishness wins in the end and it was a good lesson for me.

I do really like my job. I do enjoy going to work and I really am not bitter yet. Or at least not any more bitter than I was before I took up this career. My issues are basic management and leadership problems and really don't have anything to do with nursing.

On a positive note - there are days when I actually think I know a little bit of what I'm doing. I put an NG tube in a woman that had a self-proclaimed strong gag reflex (it probably helped that she was fairly comatose), I haven't killed anyone yet (to my knowledge), and my preceptor doesn't think I'm a total idiot (most of the time).

Happy Nursing!

The ED smells bad

2007-10-30T17:21:00.000-04:00

So, we are almost finished with our ICU class - this is really, really good news. We got lectured last week on our attitude in class - I won't go into the whole thing, suffice it to say, we were not the problem but we are now silent, never ask questions and no longer provide our opinions, even when asked. Anyway, I have decided that I love the people I work with, but I have no respect whatsoever anymore for the people I work for. They handled an easy situation unprofessionally and with no respect at all. Someone never told these people that respect works both ways - you can't expect it if you never give it.

So, yesterday was oozing leg wound day in the ED. For some reason, the cellulitis/gangrene bus pulled up in front of our ED and let everyone off. And just so you know, peppermint oil spray does not make it any better. It actually makes the smell worse.

More classes = More complaining

2007-09-29T23:02:00.000-04:00

So, we have had 3 of the 13 ICU classes I am being forced to take as part of my orientation. Yes, I said ICU and yes I am working in the ED. The classes are definitely geared toward the ICU and not the ED. Here is the deal - most of the time, by the time a patient makes it to the ICU there is at least an inkling of what is wrong with the patient. This is not so in the ED. The patients come in and unless they have a previous history of their problem or they are bleeding profusely - it is kind of like a game of Clue to figure out the problem. Therefore, our approaches to our patients are different. I am not complaining about taking the course. It is a great review and I needed a review since I had almost 4 months off between finishing school and starting my job. Besides, they pay me the same. But is it too much to ask for them to throw in one slide that says, "oh yeah - this is probably what you might see in the ED patient..."? I don't think so.

While we are on the topic of classes, let me rant about the lack of teaching experience. If you are going to call yourself a nursing educator then take a class or two on how to educate. Reading powerpoint slides is not education - that is patronizing. I can read the slides myself. You are wasting my time and your time if you stand in front of me and provide me with no other information than what is on the slide. You are being paid for your technical expertise and your self proclaimed vast amounts of experience. Share that with me.

I shared all of this with our new Nursing Educator in the ED. It was her first day. She LOVES me already.......

Ok, ok you talked me into it

2007-09-14T17:37:00.001-04:00

Ok, ok. You talked me into it. I will continue to post - a little. The title for the blog has changed a little - it is now Pissed Off New Grad Nurses. I'm not as creative as the person who came up with the original name - this was the best I could do. One other change - I will now be blogging with my real first name. I will still not divulge what school I went to, what hospital or what town I am working in, and all my coworkers names will be fake - I've got to keep some anonymity!

So, nursing is no different from many other careers - your education never really ends. However, I was kind of looking forward to getting away from the classroom setting for a while. HA. This is not to be the case. Today, I spent 8 hours in a classroom (the second of two sessions) learning about how to analyze EKG strips. Ok, definitely a useful skill. A need to know. A professional requirement. I'm paid the same for this time as I'm paid on the floor. I have no problem learning it. I have no problem sitting in a classroom with 50 of my fellow new grads while you teach it to me. But DO NOT talk to me like I am a toddler. I am a grown human who graduated from college - I am not a total idiot, you do not have to speak slowly and over enunciate your syllables.

I am all about the pre-test for a lot of these things. Would it be that hard to give us a pre-test and if you pass it, then you just tested out of the period of instruction. I really think it would save us and the educators a lot of time and effort. And that way, they would have much more time for the people who don't understand the stuff and need a little extra instruction. Some of us had this stuff in school and listening to it again in such a patronizing way is like sticking ourselves in the eyeball with the calipers. It is really sad when I would rather be reading my required reading for my Marine Corps Command and Staff course than listen to Heavy D (that is what we nicknamed the instructor owing to her big size) drone on about junctional rhythms again.

So, I am a person who learns best through doing things. Lucky for me, my preceptor understands this and she is of the, "watch one, do one, teach one" philosophy. I like this - I get to do a lot of new things this way. The new grads in the ED are way ahead of our counterparts in the ICUs. They are not allowed to do anything. They are not even allowed to suction their patients, they don't pass meds, they can't even document in the patient chart. They are still being treated like students, complete with clinical conferences where they discuss their clinical experiences for the day. I'm all about supervised practice, having preceptors, I don't want to be thrown to the wolves all on my own too soon. But it is almost as if they have gone back in time to their first semester in nursing school. I get that we don't have very much experience, but the way you get experience is by doing things, not just talking about them.

Ok enough. I have two days off in a row - I've got to get a whole lot of fun in during those 48 hours!

Last Post - probably

2007-09-07T19:53:00.000-04:00

Well, I realize it has been several months since my last post. In that time, I took and passed my NCLEX (with the minimum number of questions - take that whomever waitlisted me for nursing school!), moved to a new city and started my job as a Registered Nurse in the Emergency Department. Yes, I am a new grad in an ED. Yes, I realize this pisses off many experienced nurses who do not feel that there is a place for new grads in the ED. The hospital I am working at has a phenomenal program for new graduates. At no point will I be unleashed on patients without my preceptor, clinical leader, clinical educator, and nurse manager feeling that I am entirely well prepared. I will be taking the same 3 month classroom course as the ICU new grads at my hospital (in conjunction with supervised clinical work) so I will be well prepared to serve my patients. I will spend at least 4 months under an experienced preceptor, with the option to extend that if I (or my boss) thinks I need it.

Do I think that a new grad program in an ED is for everyone? Absolutely not. There were people I interviewed with who would have been a pile of mush after the first day. My management had the foresight to not hire them - go figure. All four of the new grads in my unit have ED experience both prior to and during nursing school, 3 of us are 2nd degree, and the one who is not is very mature. I mean heck - I have spent 11 years in the Marine Corps and been to two war zones - chaos and multi-tasking is not a stranger to me! Ok, soap box done.

I, so far, really enjoy my co-workers. I have not seen a nursing staff yet with the morale of this group of nurses. They actually like each other AND, shocker of all shockers - they like their job!!! I have yet to hear someone complain about the nursing shortage or the patients or how much they wish they had never gone into nursing. And believe me, we are busy enough to invite some complaining. At any given time, we can have up to 38 patients in our ED - not counting those in the waiting room - and oh yeah - those who are "boarding" waiting for rooms upstairs. Plus, we are a teaching hospital with like 900 residents and students milling about. I promise - I haven't forgotten my roots - I'm nice to the students (even the medical students). The nurses I work with actively seek out ways to help each other. They ask each other questions about patient care, they look up meds if they need to, they work with the doctors without that animosity that always seems to develop. Short story - I think I have found the jackpot and what a great place to start working!

So, chances are this will be the last post on this site. Who knows - I might make some more.....

It is about darn time!

2007-05-21T13:13:00.000-04:00

Well, it was about darn time but now I am no longer a student nurse and I am now a graduate nurse! Yep - it is true - my school in it's infinite wisdom has awarded me a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing. So now I am in that really fun limbo period where I am not a student, but not a real nurse yet. I don't start my job until the end of August, so I am fulfilling my duty to the US Marine Corps and at the same time studying for my NCLEX. Ok, well I am a little less enthusiastic about that - just can't seem to motivate myself. It will come - especially after I catch up on all the re-runs of the TV I missed this year!

Tear Jerker

2007-03-30T22:25:00.000-04:00

In one of my classes today we watched the movie "Wit" with Emma Thompson. Apparently it was a Broadway play for several years and then was made into a movie by HBO in 2001. I tend to not cry in public - could be the Marine in me - but this movie had everyone in the class sniffling and then just out and out bawling.

I am glad we watched it and would suggest it to any new or seasoned healthcare provider but I wish I had been warned about its serious emotional aspects. Make sure you are somewhere you can cry and have plenty of tissues!

http://www.hbo.com/films/wit/synopsis.html

Ick

2007-03-28T13:39:00.000-04:00

Ok, I gagged for only the 2nd time in my nursing student career. Yesterday I had a COPD patient in the ICU. He was mostly there but I had a little bit of difficulty understanding him because he did not have his teeth in and where I live people have accents which make them difficult to understand even when they have their teeth. We did his meds to include one that had to be mixed in orange juice because it tastes nasty. I was helping him get cleaned up and he mumbles something and points at his mouth. I thought he was going to through up so I get the basin and he hocks up some nasty sputum. Now, vomit - no problem, diarrhea - no problem, blood - no problem, amputated limbs - no problem, oozing wounds - no problem, inside parts on the outside - no problem, sputum - BIG PROBLEM. I just can't do it. It grosses me out to the point of gagging. I could never be a respiratory therapist or work in a respiratory unit.

Other icky thing for this week - we had a liver failure patient who was a train wreck and probably circling the drain. His blood chemistries were way, way out of whack. So, of course he gets prescribed Kayexalate and Lactulose via his NG tube since he is on a vent. My preceptor decides that I need to taste both of these (they are liquids) so I know when my patients ask me what they taste like. I taste them - not too bad. I wouldn't want a cupful of either, but you could get them down. But when you mix the two together in a plastic cup so you can draw it up in a big ol' syringe to push it down the NG tube - they are the color of watery mud. Also, fortunately for me but big time unfortunate for the night shift - this all occurred at about 1830 or so - just in time for shift change at 1900. Sorry guys!!!! If you don't know what these two meds do - say thank you because it means you have never had to take them and you have also never had to clean up the result!

The ICU

2007-03-23T13:26:00.000-04:00

So, I have done two shifts in the ICU for my new clinical rotation. I love my preceptor so far. She looks like a little elf - short spikey hair, little tiny person, she even has pointy ears! She is very nice, upbeat, not burntout and realistic. It is very nice to see someone who loves her job and doesn't talk down to patients.

On the second day, I had my own patient. She was an advanced Alzheimer's patient with a fractured hip. She had had it repaired and was in the ICU because she had had some arrhythmias in the PACU. Anyway, she was out of control. She would be nice and fine one minute and then she was mean and nasty the next minute. She kept pinching me, she spit at the NA, and she tried to hit one of the other nurses. So, towards the end of my 12 hour shift, my patient was back in bed and she did not have the restraints on since she had been relatively cooperative for the past few hours. I look in there and she has her hands under the blanket in the general area of her Foley catheter. I run in there and she is yelling at me to stop hurting her, I pulled back the blanket and find her YANKING AT HER CATHETER. She wasn't bleeding yet, but she was getting close! I go to pry her fingers from the catheter and she grabs both of my hands and will not let go. I called for my preceptor who comes in laughing and we managed to get her to let go and get the restraints back on. It was a crazy 12 hours and reinforced my desire to work in the ED where my patients come and go within the same day!!!

Don't get me started on the Kayexalate enema I had to give.......

New Clinical Assignment

2007-03-13T23:27:00.000-04:00

Well, my 6 weeks in the ED are over and I will now spend 6 weeks in the ICU. I am not happy to be leaving the ED, but I am happier to be going to the ICU instead of the surgical floor as was originally planned. Not that I have an issue with the surgical floor, it is just that I spent a whole summer on medicine/surgical floors and I have had enough of it. I know that it is not what I want to do - heck I already took a job in an ED for after I graduate.

I will miss "theme days" in the ED - you know things like "boil on my buttocks day" or "kidney stone day" or "random laceration day" - anytime we got more than 2 of the same complaint (other than kids with upper respiratory issues or runny noses) it turned into a theme day.

I will miss joking around with the PA's in the ED. They were a good group of guys and their students were hilarious - talk about clueless! But you could talk them into just about anything - even helping you give a soap suds enema. Hey, they need to know what they are asking the nurses to do for their patients!

I will miss my preceptor who ate constantly but never seemed to gain any weight. And the fact that she always made me give the Toradol shots to the patients with elephant tough skin.

I will miss the patients who come in complaining of nausea and vomiting for a week and immediately ask for something to eat - from the hospital cafeteria. Believe me, that is definitely not going to help! Or the middle age men who come in with chest pain and want to go smoke a cigarette while they wait for their labs to come back. And the crack users who come in with chest pain but they don't do drugs.

In all honesty, I am in serious nursing school burnout. My "Give a sh!t" level has dropped to an all time low. I just want to graduate, take my boards and get to work. We have a series of interdisciplinary sessions with the other health affairs students at my university coming up in the next couple of weeks. I'm sure that my bitterness will not be evident at all as I deal with 2nd year medical students and dental students and social work students. We had a patient safety seminar with the 4th year medical students last week and it was all I could do to not strangle one of my arrogant group members.

So that has been my beef over the past couple of weeks. I have spent 2 years in nursing school hearing about how much it sucks to be a nurse right now because of the shortage and I will be overworked and underappreciated from day one. Well you know what? Since this is the only nursing world I will probably know (I don't see an end to the shortage anytime soon - self licking ice cream cone - people quit because there is a shortage and working conditions suck faster than they can be replaced thereby perpetuating the shortage) shouldn't I go into it with a positive attitude and with optimism? Shouldn't I be looking forward to my first job as a challenge and not a burden? Shouldn't I be excited about working hard, not already dreading it and wishing it were easier? If I am always going to have 6-7 patients, shouldn't I get used to that from the beginning and not just constantly wish that it were easier? That isn't to say that we shouldn't push for more nurses and better nurse to patient ratios and better work environments and more pay and better benefits - but lets not start off on a bad foot with our CHOSEN profession.

Ok, enough of a rant - and now back to my Spring Break!

Oh yeah - one more thing - I hate wearing all white scrubs. I only have to do this for 6 more weeks and then I am going to burn my white scrubs since my new job does not require them. At least the hospital I am in now has some real old school nurses who still wear the skirts and hose so I don't stick out quite so much as I did in the unversity teaching hospital.

Understatements

2007-02-15T19:24:00.000-05:00

A guest professor made the following comment on a recent class on shock:

"Dead is not a good outcome."

Can I use that in a care plan???

A fellow student made the comment the other day after we finished our patient simulator session, "I really don't think I could work in the ED." Huge understatement for her. The scenario was an unresponsive patient with pulseless V-tach. She was the primary RN and just stood there. No "Call a Code!", no, "Start CPR!", no "Get the AED!", etc. Just stood there. Kind of scary. We graduate in like 3 months and I'm thinking those are kind of basic skills that every nurse should know even if they don't work in the ED.

Job Offer

2007-02-07T10:25:00.000-05:00

So, this past weekend, I had an interview in the ED of a hospital where I would like work after I graduate. On Tuesday, they called and offered me a job! Woo-hoo!!!! It has kind of made it hard to stay focused on school.......

ED Patients

2007-01-30T11:26:00.000-05:00

You know, the ED is a funny place. You get everything there and some of it is funny and some of it is sad. I haven't had too much funny stuff yet - although the drama coming from one of our patients yesterday was hilarious. He was trying so hard to cry and produce a tear that I was afraid he was going to have a hernia. Then there was the guy who had been in the day before because he fell down the stairs and busted up his face and had to get stitches and then the next day tripped over something and busted his stitches back open. He looked worse than he was because no one had washed off the dried up blood and iodine from his face.

This week, I also had my first crack heart attack patient. She was quite the character when she came in but once we got the pain under control, she was actually quite pleasant. She was about my age and I can't say that I didn't look at her and wonder what went wrong in her life that she ended up there in her 30's having a heart attack from too much cocaine.

I promise I will write about the staff dynamics in a post - they are fascinating. This is a very, very conservative community and the differences from the world I am used to are vast!

Catching up

2007-01-28T14:06:00.000-05:00

Well, I have had two shifts at my clinical site. The nice thing about this hospital is that it is relatively small, but it is also the only one around. So, I get to see a little of everything and the staff is really good about letting me do things. In fact, I started my first IV on a patient yesterday!! First try - it went right in. I've started them on dummies and fellow nursing students, but never on a patient. So that is good. And I get to use my Spanish on a regular basis since many of our patients are non-English speaking. I will blog about the staff in a separate entry - just let me say that I neither want to work nor be a patient in this hospital.

Yesterday I did a 12 hour shift - which I like, but the hour drive to and from the hospital makes for a very long day. Tomorrow is another 12 hour shift and then I am back to 8 hour shifts by decree of my clinical coordinator. I was a little disappointed yesterday when I was getting ready to walk out and a guy walked in the ER with a framing nail sticking out of his finger - I didn't get to stay and see how that worked out.

This weekend I have a job interview - supposedly they offer jobs on the spot - wish me luck!

Back in Session

2007-01-11T14:43:00.000-05:00

Well, we are back in session for our final semester of nursing school! My school used to only admit once a year to the nursing school and this semester they started admitting twice a year. So we have an additional 80 students running around taking up our valuable space. This also means that, as seniors, we have most of our classes (okay, 2 of the 3) in the nice new auditorium in the nice new building. I'm sure this is giving the administration heart attacks because you know students are dirty and messy (actually we are). The seats in the auditorium are not made for Americans. If you are overweight (and we have some of them) there is a distinct possibility that if you wedge yourself into the seat, you may not get back out. And, the space between the seats from front to back is not very big, so if you try to slide out your butt is right in someone's head. Very uncomfortable - and to top it off, they don't want us to eat or drink in there - HAHAHAHAHA!!! It is also very loud - if anyone is whispering you can hear it all over the room.

Oh, and the biggest injustice this semester - my clinical instructor is making us wear ALL WHITE again. It is a right of passage here for the seniors to get to wear whatever scrubs they want - at least the tops. We did talk her out of white shoes. I don't like my white shoes and much prefer my Danskos.

I'm working in an ED in a rural community hospital this semester - should provide some good stories!!

Fair winds and following seas

2006-12-12T22:22:00.000-05:00

Maj. Megan McClung has the unfortunate honor of being the most senior female Marine killed in action during OIF. She was a great officer and a great person and will truly be missed.

Semper Fi.

And...we're done.

2006-12-11T20:48:00.000-05:00

Well, I had my last exam this afternoon. It was Peds, had 142 questions and I finished it in about an hour. I am really glad this semester is over - it was very trying. The instructors were less than what I would have liked to have, the students were a little strange, and I didn't find my clinicals to be especially rewarding. But hey, we are one semester away from graduating.

The last question on the exam:

Your experience this semester:
a. Challenging
b. Enlightening
c. Boring
d. Tortuous

My answer: D

Making progress

2006-12-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

Ok, today was my Psych final and it is over. I don't think I did exceptionally well, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. One of the problems is that the professor uses different vocabulary on the exams than she uses in class. And most of those things are not in the book either - I actually read this book. Anyway, it is over and there is only one more exam to go for this semester.

Monday is my Peds final so on Sunday I will be studying kids all day! That exam is going to really suck - the professor has a reputation for using test bank questions so it is entirely possible that they will be on subjects that she did not emphasize. Fun.

Friday is the last day of classes

2006-11-30T21:41:00.000-05:00

'enuf said.

It is almost over......

2006-11-29T20:38:00.000-05:00

This is my last week of classes and one of my least favorite classes got cancelled.

Visual: me doing the happy dance.

We still have clinicals next week - but it is almost over as well. This week on the floor we had several meltdowns. Let me tell you, when a teenage girl flips out and the other teenage girls egg her on, it is quite the scene.

I have a group project due this week. I did all of the powepoints in an attempt to not have to be part of the skit. No luck. I hate doing skits in college. It is really stupid and a waste of time. I'm pretty sure that no other major (except maybe drama and they probably don't call them skits) do stuff like this. Would it be that hard to just give us the information?

It is eval time!!!!

2006-11-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

My favorite time of the year!!!! It is time for us to get evaluated on our psychiatric clinical prowess and also happens to be time for the students to evaluate our instructors. Yippeee!!

Two issues:

1. I cannot stand the argument that an instructor cannot mark you at the highest level for a midterm evaluation because then you would not have anywhere to grow. That is crap. I am being evaluated on what is expected of me AT THAT TIME. If I am meeting the highest expectations for what I should be able to do AT THAT TIME then I should get the highest mark. And no, marking me at a 5 of 5 does not mean that I know everything there is to know about psych nursing. It means that I am meeting and exceeding the objectives for a 24 month BSN student mid-way through their psych clinical rotation. Now, also do not use the above excuse as a reason to not mark someone high because you do not think they have earned it and don't have the guts to tell them that - but you had also better be able to back that up!

2. Streamline the evaluation process. My school requires an evaluation on anyone who instructs us for 3 or more hours. My school also relies a lot on guest lecturers who lecture for an entire class session which happens to last for 3 hours. Therefore, it is not unusual for us to need to complete 20 or more evaluations. If it is really necessary that we evaluate all of our guest lecturers then make those evaluations available to us as soon as they lecture, not 3 months later. No one wants to fill out 20 evaluations while they are trying to study for exams and pretty much hate nursing school anyway. Also, the more you bug me about completing the evals, the less likely I am to do them and the more likely I am to give you a negative eval if I choose to take the time to fill them out.

Ok - back to work on my group project for my leadership class. Have I ever posted on how much I hate group projects??

A non-nursing school related rant

2006-11-25T14:01:00.000-05:00

I, along with many others, made the trek home for Thanksgiving. I decided to drive on Tuesday thinking that less people would be driving that day as opposed to Wednesday. I got a late start since I had my psych clinicals that morning and the weather was horrible. What is normally a 2-2.5 hour drive took me close to 4 hours to make.

I consider myself to be a pretty good driver. I have logged a lot of miles driving on freeways - my car is 7 years old but has really only been driven 5 of those years and has close to 120,000 miles on it. I was taught to drive by my father, who at one time in his life was a truck driver. I have driven in many countries where driving is considered a contact sport and done just fine. I will not rant about the continued decline in the overall abilities of drivers today - I will confine this rant to my trip on Tuesday:

1. If you are not going AT LEAST 5 miles an hour over the speed limit - GET OUT OF THE FAR LEFT LANE.
2. If you are afraid of driving or your car - GET OUT OF THE FAR LEFT LANE.
3. I know it is raining and dark, if you choose to drive 35 miles an hour on a major interstate freeway - DO NOT DO IT IN THE FAR LEFT LANE.
4. If the traffic going in the opposite direction, divided from you by a huge median including a cement wall, stops - YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SLOW DOWN.
5. If you know you are going to exit in the next couple of miles and there is a lot of traffic - PLEASE GET OVER IN THE RIGHT HAND LANE early so you do not have to slow down to an almost stop and wait for someone to let you in.

Now, I know there is someone out there who is cursing my car right now - but I was polite the entire way and did not tailgate anyone or flash my brights, unlike my fellow college student with the Tri-delt sticker on her car (the Delta Delta Delta Sorority - remember the SNL skit, "Delta, delta, delta can I help ya, help ya, help ya...).

In two days I will turn around and go back the other way. I'm lucky, I can wait until Monday - hopefully the majority of the travelers will have gone home on Sunday!

Quote 'o' the day

2006-11-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

From my least favorite professor today:

"You learn in psych nursing that sometimes it is ok to leave your patient on the floor."

Although probably true, it seems like it is one of those things you just learn and don't need to admit!

Tonight I was the second degree rep for a Information Session for people interested in the nursing program. I'm not sure I was the right person for the job. Last week I contemplated asking for my money back for an hour of instruction I found particularly useless.
One of them asked if any of us planned on getting our master's degree anytime soon. Before I stop myself, I blurted out, "I'm just trying to graduate." At least I didn't add, "before I tell some of the staff what I really think of them." Then someone asked about the Leadership class and what it entails. Fortunately, the Dean of Academics (or something like that) gave some stock answer. Good thing I didn't have time to say it is silly and a waste of 3 hours a week.

Only 3 more days of classes until this semester is finished! Yippeee!!!

Happy Birthday!

2006-11-09T17:03:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to the US Marine Corps - 10 November 1775.

It is a day early, but I will be on the road tomorrow heading to the Birthday Ball where we Marines will put on our fanciest uniforms and celebrate our heritage in the same way we do every year - chow, cake, and plenty of alcohol.

I think we look pretty good for 231 years old!

Semper Fi.

Breeding

2006-11-08T18:40:00.000-05:00

Some people just shouldn't breed. But I supposed if you are responsible enough to realize that then you would be responsible enough to not give your daughter cocaine and let your boyfriend beat on her. You also would probably not allow your already tending towards violence 14 year old boy to be exposed to your S&M/bondage fetish.

I would say 90% of the teens that are on my psych clinical floor would not be there if they had even semi-capable parents. Honestly, that is a maddening thought - these kids are screwed up (some of them permanently) because their parents are idiots. Now, there are some that have mental health disorders that probably would have developed no matter what like schizophrenia, but most have behavior issues that are learned or are reactions to disruptions/lack of support in their psychosocial development. I will agree that some kids are just genetically pre-disposed to having a mental illness, but for many it may not manifest itself if there is not a precipitating stressor - like abuse from a parent.

Things I learned today:

1. Nurses have more tact than doctors and a better chance of explaining things so the 8th grade educated mother of a schizophrenic teenager can understand what is happening.
2. Nothing good ever comes of a sentence that starts, "So, the mother's boyfriend....."
3. Cucumbers don't stay fresh for 2 weeks after they have been cut up.

Should be studying.......

2006-11-07T20:06:00.000-05:00

So, I should be studying for my Peds exam this week, but I am not. By the way, it is my last regular exam before finals for this semester!!!! Big cheers for that - we are getting closer to being done and the hell out of here.

Congrats to Ashley from my psych clinicals who has landed herself a sweet job at a MAJOR hospital for after we graduate. Yes, you heard me right - it is November and she already has a job lined up for June. Impressive.

My psych clinical assignment today was interesting. Oppositional defiant, conduct disorder, anti-social disorder tendancies - the standard animal torturer, fire setting type. I think he was mildly disappointed when some of the things he said got no reaction from me. That might be why my preceptor assigned me to him - some of the things he said would probably have sent some of my fellow students running. I'm almost intrigued with what he will come up with tomorrow. Or, most likely, he will actually talk to me since his attempts to get a reaction out of me failed. The creepiest thing is this tracking thing he does with his eyes. He puts his head down and then looks up with his eyes and tracks the other kids as they walk around the room. Unfortunately I think this kid is headed for trouble in the future. In the meantime, my clinical preceptor will really enjoy my Interpersonal Process Recording this week. The IPR is where we write down what we said and then what the patient said and then what we would have said if we had thought of it and how it made us feel and all that therapeutic crap. Somehow I will have to keep this week's just R-rated instead of X-rated.

Ok - back to studying - it would be nice if I did well on my last big semester exam!

2006-11-03T19:50:00.000-05:00

So, I have started my psych clinicals. I am pretty much liking it, although my patients are teenagers, so I have to work really hard at relating to them. I was a good kid - or at least I think I was a good kid. So I don't have any personal background with getting so angry I found it necessary to take a sledge hammer to my parent's house (my first patient). I was also a pretty healthy kid so I don't have any personal background with suicidal gestures after being told I have lesions growing on my brain, especially after having had cancer and my thyroid removed the year before (my second patient). So I went from kids with cancer in my pediatrics clinical to teenagers with serious coping problems in my psych clinical.

We laugh a lot during my psych clinical post-conference. During the conference we are supposed to discuss our experiences on the floor and how we related to our patients and what we learned. I don't know why our painful attempts at therapeutic communication are so hilarious, but they are. What is even better is when we try to therapeutically communicate with each other - "So, how did that make you feel?" "So, what I am hearing you say is that you were uncomfortable when your patient started drawing a picture of her stabbing her baby?" Good times, good times.....

I am sure this is a common phenomenon, but my nursing school class has reached the end of our patience with nursing school. It seems to be pervasive, even the most chipper and positive students are getting bitter and jaded. Most of us truly hate going to our lectures, dread our clinicals, really dread the writing assignments for our clinicals, despise our two nursing professional classes. The volume of snide comments and crossword puzzles done today in our leadership class surpassed the previous records. We are barely halfway through the semester with one more left. I hope that we get our second (or third or fourth) wind by next semester. I don't know anyone who has started studying for an exam earlier than the night before, people are actually writing papers the day they are due, and class attendance has really dropped. I am right in there with them and can not get motivated - hopefully it gets better.

We put together a women's soccer team to play in our university intramural recreational league. We have had two games and confirmed the fact that we really suck. Our team name, The Sterile Fielders, is the best part of our game. But, I have to say, we have a really, really good time. And we did much better on our second game - we only lost 4 to 1. We lost our first game 10 to 0. Actually, I think they scored more than 10 goals, but I'm pretty sure the league quits counting at 10. Granted that first game we were only playing with 7 people instead of 9 and the other team had all of their players. Oh yeah, and there are more people on the team who have never played soccer than those who have. I played in high school and a little in college my first time around, but it has probably been at least 10 years since I played any soccer other than Marine Corps combat soccer (not the same!). We have one of those girls who is good at everything she does and another couple of girls who played in high school. The rest are just out there to have a good time, and I love 'em! During the last game I had to remind a couple of them what direction we were going in! The off-sides rule has them all confused and one, in typical nursing student fashion, questioned the rational behind the rule. We may not be able to play soccer, but we sure can be entertaining! My only beef - there were more than 20 people who signed up on the roster and the first game we didn't even have enough people to field a whole team. It was better this week, but it still pisses me off that some of my fellow students can't take a commitment seriously. I know it is only a recreational soccer game, but there are some people who really enjoy this and it isn't fair to them if we have to forfeit a game because we don't have enough people. Not to mention the $20 we forfeit if not enough people show up. So, I am sore as all get out from playing soccer, but we are really having a good time!

So that is the past week - suicidal and homicidal teenagers, un-motivated nursing students, therapeutic communication gone bad, and horrible soccer games

Next week - more homicidal teenagers, probably more un-motivated nursing students, hopefully therapeutic communication gone good, a horrible soccer game and the US Marine Corps Birthday Ball.

Peds Clincals are Done!!!

2006-10-15T21:55:00.000-04:00

Finally!!!! My pediatric clinical rotation is finished. Don't get me wrong, I like kids. Just not when they are sick and with their parents. Besides, I have never felt so helpless and silly as when I was standing in a room with a screaming child that nothing would calm them down. And, there are plenty of people who want to go into pediatric nursing, so I will take a different job!

Speaking of jobs, we have already started looking for jobs for when we graduate in May. Seems very early to me, but hey, I don't want to miss the train. Getting into a good internship is about as difficult as getting into college. I never thought I would have to write essays for a job application! There are plenty of jobs out there for us, it is making sure you get the right job for you that is difficult.

My next clinical rotation is for psychiatry. I am going to be on the adolescent acute crisis unit at the state mental hospital. I know, I know we don't call them that anymore. But it is a state funded hospital for patients with mental health problems. Anyway, it should be interesting. I was dreading this rotation, but now that I have survived pediatrics, I'm pretty sure I will be able to do psych.

Hopefully I will have some good psych stories after next week!

First exam of the semester - DONE!

2006-09-15T22:38:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'm feeling a little bit back into the swing of things now. We had our first exam in Pediatrics and even though I procrastinated the studying until the day before, I still managed to get an A. An A on my school's grading scale is 96-100%. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with that and will be very happy if I can keep it up. Like many of my fellow students, I'm a bit grade obsessed. I think it is because I was not for my first degree and that kind of bit me in the butt later on.

I'm getting very tired of our instructors telling us that grades aren't important, learning the information is. Well, if that were really true then 1. why do we have grades in the first place, and 2. why do we get nasty-grams when our grades fall below 80% or something like that? Now, come-on, who really believes that the grades aren't important?? Now I will admit that we get a bit over-obsessed and should be more realistic, but let's face it, in this day and age, grades are important. They are important if you are going to go on to graduate school (which is encouraged daily) and they are important if you want a highly competitive internship as a new grad. I'm pretty sure that answering a question with, "But I really UNDERSTAND the material" is not going to cut it in an interview. So, for all you nursing professors out there: nursing students think grades are very important and they aren't going to change their mind so just indulge their constant quest for extra points and arguing over every question they get wrong on a test.

Quotes of the week:
1. Man, you have a big pickle. Friend 1 says this to the male cashier in the bookstore.
2. Friend 2: I think I have worms.
Yolanda: You don't have worms.
Friend 2: I think I saw one in my poop yesterday.
Yolanda: You have worms.
Friend 2: Do you think I can just go to the pet store and take the same stuff they give dogs?
Yolanda: I don't think so.
The entire above conversation took place during lunch in the food court area that the hospital and all the health affairs schools share. This prompted a lot of stares; Friend 2 had to then comment loudly that she had spent the summer in Africa. Good call. Friend 2 (I haven't come up with a good nickname for her yet) is also the source of, "I don't want to do labor and delivery anymore, I saw enough vaginas in Kenya." I love our total lack of inhibition regarding conversation topics!

I Lied

2006-09-11T17:17:00.000-04:00

Ok, in the last post I said that I thought I might enjoy my Peds clinical. That was a fleeting feeling. I now dread my Peds clinical. I'm not sure what happened, but I have no desire to go back and really just want to get through it. Fortunately, I only have 2 weeks left on the floor before I start my secondary sites. I think these will be slightly more fun for me. I will be going to the Pediatric ICU (PICU), the Neonatal ICU (NICU), Pediatric Surgery, and a Pediatric Diabetes Clinic. The last one I'm not so excited about since I've done diabetes clinics before (seems to be a bit of a theme for me), but I'm sure I will survive. So, not that it was ever in consideration, I will not be a pediatric nurse.

We had an interesting issue come up during my clinical last week. Students are not allowed to give patients medications on their own (for a million good reasons), so you have to either have your clinical preceptor or the RN assigned to your patient with you. Well, I was ready to give some Gentamicin (potent antibiotic, can be toxic to the ears and kidneys) via IV to my patient. I got my clinical instructor and we got the med, I went through the requisite 20 questions about the med, and we went in the room and gave it. No problems, all is well. The next day I have the same patient and the same RN (I don't really like her, but I'm sure she is professional adequate). My preceptor and I go and get the med and get ready to give it. Earlier, the assigned RN had said to me, "You don't have to give it so slow, you can just run it through a 10cc flush." I parroted this back to my preceptor and she says, OK. So we go in and instead of using the piggyback pump (with a syringe) we infuse the Gentamicin into the Y-site on the patients IV line. The pump running on that line was infusing normal saline at 20mL/hr (very slowly, actually slower than the recommended rate for the Gentamicin administration). Well, the assigned RN had a fit and thought we had "pushed" the Gentamicin. This would be very bad and professionally irresponsible. So she calls the pharmacy and they tell her to bolus (one time push) the patient with 200mL of normal saline. So she does it. THROUGH THE SAME LINE!! So, just in case the Gentamicin was running slow enough, she just pushed it all into the patient at a much faster rate. GREAT, GOOD CALL.

All of this led to a conference between the assigned RN, my preceptor, the Charge Nurse (the boss for the shift), and the Nurse Manager for the floor. My preceptor explained what we did, the rationale behind it (did I mention she is a PICU nurse with a master's degree?), and the fact that we actually infused it slower than normal and the bolus ended up infusing it faster. All was well - it was a difference in technique and we won't do it again so as to minimize confusion. Now, I was a little on edge during all of this, but what really pissed me off was that the RN decided it was now OK for her to badmouth my preceptor to me. This is totally inappropriate. It is completely unprofessional to speak badly of a student's preceptor to them. The student-preceptor relationship is very important and the student needs to trust and respect the preceptor. Anyway, if you have a problem with a preceptor, take it up with your charge nurse or nurse manager or the preceptor themselves and let them deal with it, but don't question their abilities in front of the students.

I am still loving my Psych class and cannot wait until clinicals start for that. This week we discussed Schizophrenia and other psychotic diagnoses. Our instructor has an apparently never ending stock of real examples for all of the diagnoses we discuss. It is great, you really come away thinking you understand the material.

One last rant and then it is off to study for a Peds exam and get ready for a 12 hour clinical from hell tomorrow. Every time we get our patient assignments we have to ask them if they mind having a nursing student. Do the doctors ever ask if the patients mind having a medical student? I doubt it. Nursing students have far less impact on your care (in the overall picture) than a medical student; we don't prescribe drugs or order invasive procedures. It isn't like they let us loose with you on our own to poke and prod and medicate willy nilly. In fact, we are highly supervised and you will probably get better care from us than the frazzled RN with 5 other patients that is assigned to you. We don't give meds without clearly demonstrating that we understand everything there is to know about the med and the administration. We don't do any nursing procedures (dressing changes, blood draws, etc.) without supervision. In fact, I did more procedures unsupervised as a Certified Nurse Assistant (put catheters in) two summers ago than I will do as a nursing student now. The biggest benefit - you will probably be our only patient. Your call bell will not be ignored. You want to talk about your dog or kid or whatever? We will listen intently - we have no other purpose than to take care of you!

My request to you: if you go to the hospital and they ask you if you would mind having a nursing student assigned to you, please allow it. It is good for us and good for you! You definitely want us learning our trade while supervised. And if you go to a teaching hospital - one usually affiliated with a university - keep in mind that you will probably encounter a student or two. That is why it is called a TEACHING hospital!

Finally back in the saddle!

2006-08-30T19:30:00.000-04:00

Well, after a very eventful year off from school, I am finally back full time and ready to finish my degree.

First, I want to say congratulations to all my friends from the Class of 2006. All graduated and within a couple of months passed the NCLEX and are working as real-live RN's!!! And yes, even some of the scaryier ones graduated and are out there practicing the art of nursing right now!

As for me, I spent the last year as an officer in the US Marine Corps (my other life) and 6 months of that time in Afghanistan. I had a crappy job (it involved taking notes and writing papers - gee what a change!) and worked for an interesting boss (not in a good way interesting). But, I got to travel and I have to say the whole experience ranks up there with some of my best. But, now it is time for me to get back to the books and finish up school.

This semester I am taking Peds and Psych and am currently in my Peds rotation. As is usually the case, I went into it thinking I would not like it (I'm not much of a kid person) and ended up really enjoying my first week of clinicals. I am looking forward to Psych since my clinical rotation is at the state mental hospital. I understand from others that there are some very interesting cases there. My other two classes are our continuing Nursing Theory class and Nursing Leadership. Neither of these classes have formal exams, but plenty of papers to write and articles to read. I'm sure you will be reading many rants regarding those two classes!

I am getting to know the people in my new class. Unfortunately, the way our school works the class years don't really every mix, so chances are good you won't know anyone in the class ahead or behind you. There do not seem to be the same amount of second degree, later in life kind of students in this class, but I have found a few. One is in my Peds clinical and she spent her summer working in a hospital in Kenya delivering babies (very cool). She and I often look at each other with that "I was just in a 3rd world country and you don't know how good we have it" look.

So, some things have changed and others things have not and I'm sure you will hear all about them!

Odd habit of my new class - they clap for just about anything. It is actually kind of annoying becasue the instructors have to wait for it to be quiet before they can go on.

Some things I have already learned:
1. Pediatric oncology patients are both sad and encouraging.
2. The 6:23 AM bus will get me to hospital on time for clinicals.
3. My clinical instructor has scared the crap out of all of us (rightfully so) about giving meds to the kids.
4. I really like my Psych professor.
5. I really hate both the instructors and the entire subject of my Nursing Leadership class. Don't yell at me, I get the reason for having the class - I just hate the patronizing way they are teaching it.
6. Both success and sanity in nursing school is all about your study group - and I have to find a new one!

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-24T10:35:00.000-05:00

Just in case someone checks in: Merry Christmas to all! I am not in the States this year, but am having a good Christmas none-the-less. Santa even came to visit (dressed in a Marine uniform!) and passed out presents tonight.

I have been in touch with my fellow nursing students (they sent me an awesome package!) and the fun and frivolity continues, I can tell I will have much to blog about when I get back to school next year!

Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year as well!!

Signing Off

2005-08-24T17:21:00.000-04:00

Well, to my 3 readers, I am signing off for a little while. Due to some recent developments in my other life, I will be hanging up my stethascope for a while and rejoining the semi-real world.

Keep checking here, some of the other students may post. If I feel like it and get a chance I may even post about my latest adventure!

Yolanda.

You need thumbs

2005-08-02T12:55:00.000-04:00

Things I have learned the past couple of weeks:

1. You need both of your thumbs. We had a patient with both amputated on the same day.

2. Some interns are nice and understand their limitations. Most are not and need daily reminders that 4 years in medical school doesn't teach you everything. We just got the new herd of fresh graduates, some of them are arrogant and dumb.

3. If you are a resident and your patient is circling the drain and you don't know what is wrong, it might behoove you to listen to the nurses who have been working in the ICU for 20 years. They just might know what they are talking about.

4. Even if the pulmonary fellow tells you it is ok, you cannot leave a Swan-Ganz catheter in your patient's right ventricle. They will go into v-tach. And if they are already compromised, it just might kill them.

5. If your patient has a penile implant, it makes it very easy to put on a condom cath.

6. Butt cream made with stoma adhesive paste does not work as well as that made with stoma adhesive powder.

7. If you are putting a rectal pouch on someone, it helps if you warm up the wafer first.

8. You cannot bolus feed through a Dubhoff tube. I didn't do this, but I heard of someone who did.

Addendum:

9. If you are an intern, don't piss off the nurses on your first day, this will make your residency a painful experience. Don't talk to them like they are idiots, they went to school also to get their degree. Chances are they have more experience than you have years. Respect runs both ways and the "MD" after your name doesn't entitle you to some. It is kind of like an officer/enlisted relationship. As an officer, your enlisted can make or break you, and the same can be true of nurses and doctors. Nurses wouldn't do anything to endanger their patients, but they can make the new doc's life very difficult.

MICU

2005-07-25T22:32:00.000-04:00

This week I am in the Medicine ICU. I love it. I'm pretty sure that an ICU (probably surgical) is where I will probably work when I graduate. We are a very small hospital and so our MICU is also very small. We only have 8 beds and aren't full right now. I had my own patient (pretty much) to take care of and some cool gear to play with. My patient was really not very acute, he was actually waiting to be transferred to a regular medical floor, so it was definitely something I could handle. The MICU is so much nicer than the regular floors. The A/C works, they have the continuous monitors with touch screens that are connected to a computer program that can automatically update the computerized charting. WAY COOL. Also, the people are really great, nurses AND doctors! I think the docs were nice because it was their first week in the ICU. They are brand new residents and usually need help finding things like the bathroom and the elevators. The nurses were very welcoming and were actually kind of happy to have some extra help.

Peeve of the week: I hate those disposable stethoscope. My patient is on contact precautions for MRSA and so you can't use any of your own stuff, everything has to be disposable or hospital gear because it can't leave the room. I have a really hard time hearing with those crappy disposable steths.

I'm baaack (again)!

2005-07-21T21:03:00.000-04:00

Ok, it has been a month since I last posted, so you would think I would have a lot to blog. Not so. I went on "vacation" for two weeks and have been back at work for about a week. I have moved to the surgical floor (much better than medicine!) and am loving it. The patients don't stay as long and they are generally not total care. There is also a slightly better staffing ratio so although there is a lot of patient turnover, it doesn't seem as busy as the medicine floor. I like the staff better and they seem a bit more organized than my previous floor. Bottomline: there isn't as much crap, literally.

The other note for this entry is that JCHAO is here. Those in healthcare know what I'm talking about. Those in the military, it is like when the Inspector General comes. It has been hilarious watching everyone run around trying to get ready and hide stuff and put the signs up that need to be up and make the patient education notes in the charts and all the other stuff that tends to get pushed aside normally. JCHAO may also account for the good staffing ratios!

Patient story of the week: I had Mr. S as a patient, he had had a CABG and was being discharged that day. The AC in the hospital hadn't been working that great and the whole time he had been there, he had been hot. We got him a little fan for his room, but it was still hot and he was sweating. He had gone down to the shower with the occupational therapist and the next thing we know, the OT is calling a code from the bathroom. Mr. S had gotten too hot, got dizzy, and was starting to pass out. So the code team comes a runnin' and everyone gets in the bathroom and he is laying on the floor, but doing ok. I really felt bad for him because all he wanted to do was go home, and now he was going to be stuck in the hot hospital another day. But hey, after that, the hospital director, the director of nursing, and the director of enviornmental services came up to see just how hot is was on the floor. The Dir. of Nursing gets off the elevator and goes, "damn it IS hot up here". Well, no kidding, did she think we were making it up?? Magically, fans started appearing on the floor and we got it kind of cooled down. This morning when I came in, the enviornmental guys were walking around taking back all the fans because the AC was "fixed". BUT IT WAS STILL HOT, WE STILL NEEDED THEM.

One last thing: if the lights are off in a patient room, you might want to ask before you just turn them on, especially if it is a multi-bed ward. The biggest thing my patients complained about today was that all night people kept coming in the room and turning the light on. There are overbed lights for each bed that they can use, they don't need to use the big overhead flourescent lights to take vitals. Heck, as far as I'm concerned, there is enough hallway light that you don't need lights at all to take vitals. The IV machine is backlit so you don't need lights for that either. The overbed light gives plenty of light for giving injections, etc. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but if they don't sleep at night then they want to sleep all day and there are even more interruptions then. It just cascades and you have pissed off patients who are cranky. Fun.

Buffing auras

2005-06-20T21:07:00.000-04:00

"Once a Marine", this one's for you!

Today, I had to sit through a seminar on healing touch. Ok, I'm not a healing touch kind of person, I don't really believe the whole energy field thing, auras, and chakras. So, it was sort of hard for me to take this whole thing seriously. Now, don't get me wrong, if having your energy field un-ruffled and smoothed makes you feel better, then go for it. If sticking Hershey's kisses to your forehead makes your headache go away, then by all means, go for it. But chances are good that if you ask me to "direct energy" or "un-ruffle" your energy field, I just might giggle.

So we are in this room and they are trying to get us to feel each other's energy field and then describe it. So some of the people are saying it is warm. Your hands are like 2 inches from the person's skin...of course it is warm...it's called body heat, morons. Well, I politely sat through the whole thing, dutifully participated, said the right stuff, and did not giggle too much!

So, Once a Marine....what was that hippie comment again???

Well, he is YOUR patient....

2005-06-20T20:33:00.000-04:00

So, today I got to my floor after spending the weekend doing my USMC Reserve drills to find that they had only scheduled one NA. We had 26 patients, with a lot of pending admits. They are getting ready to renovate the other end of our hall, so they are having to move to another floor on Wednesday. Therefore, they are not taking new admits so we are getting them all. This wouldn't have been too much of a problem, but for some reason, today we had all the prima donna nurses on one shift. There are two specifically who refuse to do anything that might possibly be an NA skill. I decided that instead of shadowing one of the RN's, I would help the lone NA out and took half of the patients. That meant I had 13 patients to take vitals on, help with breakfast, get bathed, change linens, change wound dressings, help go to the bathroom, do blood sugar tests, and I also had 3 new admits to get settled and fill out part one of the admit form on. Not to mention the myriad of doctors, residents, attendings, and family members who all had requests. So, needless to say, I was a little busy. And yes, I understand that there are many people who do this all day every day with even more patients. Soooo, I was in the room with all of our guys who need one-on-one monitoring and one of the patients with a hip fracture asked to go to the bathroom. I had not ever had this patient, and I noticed that he had on a diaper so I went to find his nurse to see if he had been using a bed pan, the diaper, or a bedside commode. I finally found her (I had also never worked with her before), and asked what the deal was with him. She didn't know, so I asked if she would help me get him up on the bedside commode. SHE SAID NO. Yep, she said, "No, I'm busy, go find the other NA." I just kind of looked at her dumbfounded. I told her that the other NA was busy with her own 13 patients (like 6 were contact precaution and also needed to be fed....way more time consuming) and it would be great if she could just spend the one minute to HELP ME WITH HER PATIENT!!! Did I mention that it was her patient??? I got a little mad, so I left and went back to my other patients. I figured I would just end up cleaning him up later. But basically, I was appalled that she didn't even try to help me HELP HER PATIENT. She would die on one of the floors that don't have any NA's. And who is she to assume that her "busy" is more important than my "busy"??? Fortunately, I only had to deal with them for half of the day. The other half of the day, I had to sit through a class on "healing touch" (see previous post).

Lesson learned today: Never, ever treat the person who wipes your patient's butt badly. They will abandon you and you will have to do all of it yourself.....and they may never help you again!

Spying

2005-06-11T20:42:00.000-04:00

I'm in special program this summer for student nurses. We work on a floor under the supervision of an RN preceptor doing Nurse Aide duties. We are also supposed to be learning how the nurse organizes his/her time, how they prioritize, and how they do their assessments. We also attend weekly meetings with the other students and the nurse educators who are sponsoring us. All in all, it is a great program, we work full time and are paid and get to have some good experiences. My problem with the program lies in the nurse educators. These are nurses who are all MSN's and who monitor and help keep the RN's on the floors within competencies and up to date on the lastest policies and procedures. Well, one in particular (the one for my floor) has taken to using us as spies to see what is really going on on the floor. This puts us in an awkward position because we have to watch everything we say around them to make sure we aren't diming out the nurses on the floor. I mean, I would say something if someone were doing something dangerous, but most of their short cuts are just that: short cuts to save time and are totally safe. Besides, I hardly think I have anywhere near the experience to be critiquing anyone on their technique!

I was telling my preceptor how I felt like the nurse educators were using us as spies and he said that they did the same to him when he was a new grad/new hire. This technique is not good for retention or morale. Does anyone really want to work in a place where they are always worried about who is spying on them? I don't. I understand the need in our society for healthcare workers to do everything according to policies and procedures so as to minimize the risk for/during lawsuits. But wouldn't it be nicer (I guess this is my naivete), to empower (good buzzword) and then trust your employees to do the right thing! All distrust and deception does is undermine authority and lead to angry workers who are more likely to do things wrong just to get back at you.

I have spent several years in the military as an officer. Everyone told me that when I became a nurse, I would hate it because I wouldn't be in charge and I would have to take orders from doctors. Let me set something straight: I don't care who you are, nurse, doctor, enlisted, officer, you are always taking orders from someone. From Privates to Generals, we all take orders from someone, I'm used to that and that isn't my problem right now. My problem is watching talented nurses be undermined in their duties by not being trusted.

I don't think I will be applying for a job at this institution when I graduate next year.

Work

2005-06-01T21:14:00.000-04:00

Well, I have been working on the floor at my hospital for the past week and a half. I've been doing mainly nurse aide (NA) stuff which is a lot of hard work. Let me tell you, if you ever meet a NA compliment her/him on doing their job. It is hard, thankless, and smelly. I can't even count how many bed linen changes I've done, how many adult diapers I've changed, and how many urinals I've emptied. You know it is really going to be a great day when you have your patient up on his side and are cleaning up his backside and he starts having another bowel movement right then. Don't get me wrong, the RN's work very hard and do a lot of dirty work, but at least at my hospital, the majority of the disgusting jobs are done by NA's.

So, I've been working five 8 hour shifts a week. I'm beat! I have had a wide array of patients, from nice older men, young guys, and the occasional mean, crotchety old man. Some of the latter group have suffered strokes and this has changed their personality. We had one patient for about 6 days who would point his finger at us and call the women bitches and he threw his doctor's out of his room daily. It was quite the show. One morning he asked me to draw him a picture of a vagina. I wasn't quite for sure how to respond to that so since he didn't need any immediate care, I left.

Finally, several of the patient's have family members who visit. This is wonderful, for most of these guys (99% of my patients are men), it is the highlight of their day. There have been some cases where the family member was not welcomed by the patient and having them there created a non-therapeutic environment and we had to ask the family member to leave. The only problem I have is that some of the family members are very demanding. I understand very well that you want the best possible care for your family member, so do I! But I also need to provide that same level of care to all of my other patients. Sometimes I can't just drop what I'm doing (especially if I'm up to my elbows in feces), to get water for you father. I am more than happy to show you where the ice/water machine is and maybe you could help me out by getting it yourself.

Some things I've learned this past week:

1. C. diff. can make feces smell really bad. Not that it doesn't already.
2. It is hard to get a good stool sample from a patient on continuous tube feeding.
3. Duoderm will pull loose skin off, that probably hurts. I almost got kicked in the head because of this.
4. Make sure the blood glucose monitoring machine is working right BEFORE you do the finger prick. (Ok, this one wasn't my fault, it was working fine up until the part where you put the blood on the strip)
5. The soiled utility room really, really smells bad. Either breathe through your mouth or take a big breath and hold it before you go in.
6. They make saline soaked gauze pre-packaged. This stuff is great for wet to dry dressings and much less messy than a boat of 4X4's.
7. Condom catheters are a blessing and a curse. They make a nice non-invasive way for a patient who is not very mobile to void, but they are difficult to put on, can cause irritation, and come off at the most inconvenient times.
8. Don't let an ostomy bag get too full before you empty it, it just might explode. We had a patient who was transported via ambulance to the hospital and it wasn't checked before they left and it exploded during transport. He was a mess when we got him, but I'm glad I didn't have to ride in the ambulance!

More painful than class

2005-05-17T22:10:00.000-04:00

I have found something more painful than going to class: attending orientation at a federal medical facility. I am working in a VA hospital for the summer and we are going through our orientation this week. It is very painful. Worse than joining the military, worse than applying for nursing school, worse than sitting through classes in nursing school. I didn't think it was possible. At least I'm getting paid. Not much, but it is better than nothing.

This past weekend

2005-05-10T10:43:00.000-04:00

Well, as previously reported, we finished the spring semester on Friday. We still don't have grades for that last final which blows my mind since it only had 30 questions on it. Anyway, there was a fair amount of celebrating this weekend, not quite as much as originally intended, but still a respectable amount of alcohol was ingested.

Friday night we had a Nurse's Wrap Party at a local restaurant/bar that was kind enough to open early for us so we could start drinking at 3:00pm. I have some friends who are not normally big drinkers but were totally plastered by about 5:00pm. Actually, my friends and I are not regular drinkers anymore, but when we go, we go big. I thought I was going to be driving later that night, so I didn't drink much. This was more of a pre-flight for later, so I left a little early to catch the bus to my house and get ready to go out later. I'd been home about an hour and another friend (Julia) called and asked if I had heard from the two (Mary and Sue) who were totally plastered by 5:00. Come to find out, Mary and Sue left the bar to walk to Mary's house. Mary only lives about a 10 minute walk away. 45 minutes and 2 cell phone messages later, we hadn't heard from them and neither was answering either cell phones or home phones. I started to get a little worried that they were passed out in a ditch somewhere. I later talked to Sue and she said they got a little lost (I really don't know how), and that Mary had to stop and pee in the woods. Sue had also received a phone call from her mom and promptly told her that they were lost in an alley and she was drunk. Boy was her mom proud! The evening ended with me, Julia, and her husband meeting up with some Aussie's they know in a nearby town (complete with a post drinking meal at the Waffle House), Sue and her roommate rallying and going out again later, and Mary "asleep" at her house by 10:30pm. Since I left the original party early, I apparently missed the drunken fools. But, we had class on Monday and there were pictures. Sue still doesn't remember lifting up her shirt to show off her stomach for the camera......

This was my first weekend in 18 months where I really did not have any school work to do. I started taking the last of my pre-req's for nursing school in January 2004, took my last final for those on a Saturday in May and started nursing school that Monday. Ever since, we have been in class. It was weird. We all just kept thinking we were supposed to be reading something or writing a paper or doing a study guide. Or in my case, since I procrastinate through the weekend, chastising myself for waiting too late to read something, write a paper, or do my part of the study guide! Class on Monday made up for the fun we had over the weekend. It was so painful, I wanted to cry. Fortunately we only have to meet in person for this class twice. Anymore, and it might violate some clause of the Geneva Conventions. It was fun though to hear about Sue giving the smackdown to Army Barbie when she started to mouth off! I'd pay to see that again!

I almost forgot: we have assigned groups for my summer school on line class. We had to meet in these groups on Monday. I hate assigned groups. Not that I don't want to meet new people, but at this point (one year in), I have met the people I want to be friends with. Also, I hate having to do group projects for grades with people I don't like. You never know what their skill level is, and normally I just end up doing everything myself because I am type A and a perfectionist. I have a circle of friends that I trust will put as much work into the project as I will and I am confident we will get good grades. We think the same way and we understand each other and what to focus on. I just have not had good luck in nursing school with assigned groups.

I have two people in my group that I absolutely can not stand. I mean, CAN NOT STAND. One is PWS (butt crack, flipping off the teacher) and the other one doesn't have a nickname yet. She cried last year when she didn't pass one of her practical exams and blamed it on the TA that taught the class because he didn't read the instructions verbatim. The test was on things like making occupied beds, sterile gloving, standard precautions, not hard stuff. If she had spent enough time practicing, she wouldn't have had a problem. Besides, I really hate it when people blame others for their failures. So I had to listen to her run her suck about what she is going to do this summer and what kind of nurse she wants to be, blah, blah, blah. Then PWS, the queen of stupid and inappropriate comments, made a typically PWS comment. I had mentioned that I was in the Marine Corps and had been for several years. She pipes up in her silly Valley Girl accent and says, "They, like, have girls in the Marine Corps?" (Read that in a squeaky voice with plenty of up inflection at the end.) I (and the rest of the group) looked at her with disbelief. Here is the rest of the conversation:

Me: I'm just going to pretend like you didn't just say that. Rewind, erase.
PWS: Well, they don't have women in the SEALS.
Me: yes that is true, but we aren't SEALS, those are Navy and special forces.
PWS: I've just never seen one. Really?
Me: Uh, yeah, we've been around pretty much continually since like WWI.
PWS: Well, what do you wear?
Me: (sarcasm) Little ruffled coulots and white gloves. Oh and cute little hats. We serve tea on a tray to the guys, kind of like Donut Dolly's.

Sometimes it scares me that these are supposedly college educated people and they are socially and culturally clueless. I mean maybe I'm being too harsh, is it not common knowledge that all of the services are co-ed now?? There is even a series of commercials and print media that feature Woman Marines. I don't know, blows my mind.

Well, I'm off for a very mini vacation. I start working on Monday and since I received no financial aid for summer school, I will be working as much as I possibly can this summer.

I doubt I will blog for a little while, please don't yell!

An aside: I find it funny that when you run spell checker on Blogger, it tries to replace the word 'blog' as being spelled wrong!

WE ARE DONE

2005-05-06T14:30:00.000-04:00

We are done for the semester. We just took our last final and we are now headed up to drink several beers.

Quote 'o' the school year

2005-05-04T21:04:00.000-04:00

Ok, after consulting the hard copy quote book that we keep, here is the quote of the year for the 2004-2005 school year. Here is the set up: we were in our Individual and Family Development class last semester on a Friday afternoon. I have blogged about this class before, we hated it and the instructor was a bit ethnocentric (hey big word, eh?!). She doesn't really understand people who don't fit into the stereotypical suburban nuclear family mold. For some reason we were talking about plastic surgery and she asked our opinion on it. Hers was that we should all embrace the process of aging and love our wrinkles. My friend, we will call her Mary, is a unique person with a wonderfully quirky personality. Mary's parents are divorced and her mom has been married a couple of times since. Ok, that should be enough background.

Instructor: What do you all think about plastic surgery?
Mary: Well, as a child of a woman who loves plastic surgery, I don't have a problem with it since my mom feels better about herself if she thinks she looks better.
Instructor: What does your father think about it?
Mary: Which one??
Instructor: [silence, complimented by stupid dumbfounded look on her face]
Celine: Mary, if you are going to go drinking in the middle of the day, you have to start inviting all of us!

I'm sure it is much funnier if you were there......

A word about course critiques

2005-05-04T20:47:00.000-04:00

Our school does end of course critiques on line. They have a special website that we log into and complete evaluations on all of our courses and instructors. We have to evaluate every person who taught us for 3 or more hours throughout the semester to include clinical instructors. This can get a bit unwieldy. This semester I have 13 evaluations to do. Now, according to our instructors, their jobs depend on our evals. Ok, if that really is the case, I can see why they are obsessed with us completing them. But, I have received no less than 5 emails a day and at least 2 to 3 in person verbal reminders to fill out our evals this week. WE HAVE FINALS THIS WEEK. Do you really want me to evaluate your instruction and your course while I am studying obscene amounts of info for your ridiculously long final exam?? So far this week I have answered 350 multiple choice questions on subjects ranging from community health to obstectrics to research. I am NOT in the mood to give you the critique you want. I can give you a critique, but it will probably not say what you want it to say!

They wonder why we give overwhelmingly negative evals......timing is everything, folks!

Update

2005-05-04T20:26:00.000-04:00

Well, we have completed 3 of 4 finals. As far as I'm concerned, today's was the only one I was a bit concerned about. It wasn't too bad. I, of course, could have studied more, but I didn't so no use worrying over it. Our next one is Friday (only 25 question) so I am taking tonight off. Well that, and why study ahead?? It takes all the fun out of cramming the night before! I have this wacky bunch of friends I study with and study sessions usually turn into hysterical laughing fits. Interestingly, we are all doing very well in school.

I sold back my Nursing Research book today. I got $16.00 for it. I will blow it all Friday night on beer. Yea! Big spender!!

Quote 'o' the day: Day 1

2005-05-02T18:26:00.000-04:00

Ok, here is the quote 'o' the day for the first day of exams:

Dawn, right before our first exam: "If someone were video taping me toay, they might think I am developing a mental disorder."

A little early for things like this, who knows what will happen the rest of the week. In her defense, someone did take the big coffee urn from the nursing school so there was no coffee this morning. Sucks, but there was chocolate....

Last day of classes

2005-04-30T22:16:00.000-04:00

Well, Friday was our last day of classes. It was also a day of celebration at my particular SON so there were tons of alumni around. They also had a breakfast buffet that coincided with our arrival at school that morning. It was very nice, they even let us use real plates and silverware.

Exams start on Monday. Normally, we get at least two "reading days" between the end of classes and the start of exams (not including weekends). We didn't get any this year, so some have been scrambling to get studying. Some of the rest of us are a little disgruntled with school and don't really care.

A couple of things I learned this week:

1. We are not going to ever get any comments on the actual content of the papers we write for nursing school. We will apparently only get graded on our grammar. And if there is nothing actually wrong with it, they will just plain make something up.
2. I didn't do this, but if you are going to sit on the stage in front of class when you give a presentation and you don't want everyone to see your hoo-hoo, don't wear a mini-skirt.

I guess I should start studying......

Fair Winds and Following Seas

2005-04-23T08:13:00.000-04:00

Captain James C. Edge, USMC, hard charging Devil Dog, you will be missed.

Semper Fidelis.

Response to Anonymous comment

2005-04-18T19:22:00.000-04:00

I started this as a comment and then it got too long so I made it into a post. It doesn't really have any humor to it, but it does fit the "Pissed Off-ed-ness" of this blog.

The "nurses eat their own" is rampant everywhere. I too, have made that comment after some of my clinicals. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind the phenomenon is, but I have a few theories. I think that it is a combination of "I was treated that way therefore you must be also" and some bitterness over the physician dominated hierarchy many of them work in. I have noticed that in workplaces where the nurses really run the show, the "eat their own" attitude is less prevalent. For example, I did a ride along with our EMS helos. There is a medical director (MD), but the show is run by RNs and EMTs and it was a much more friendly atmosphere. More of a mentor type attitude. I also just did a rotation at a cardiac rehab site, also run by RNs. They were nice, accommodating, and eager to teach, not belittle.

I have also seen a difference between large teaching hospitals and hospitals that don't have med students. Teaching hospitals seem to be more in the "weed them out" business than non-teaching hospitals. But again, at a teaching hospital, the attendings are treated like god by the residents and med students who in turn treat the nurses the way their attendings do which pisses off the nurses and they take it out on the next in line: students and newbies.

Finally, I think a lot of nurses are intimidated by students and new nurses because they are afraid that they will not perform up to their expectations. I have repeatedly had nurses say, "Now this was how I was taught and it might be different" before showing me a skill. It almost like they were worried that I was going to call them out on poor technique. Nurses are often creatures of habit and don't want some new person coming in and telling them there is another, potentially better, way of doing something. So, it is easier to make yourself look better by trashing someone else rather than build your own skills. Also, some just aren't good teachers and would prefer to not have students or new nurses assigned to them. But, don't take any of this the wrong way, there are many, many extremely great nurses out there! They are also overworked and students and newbies present more work for them....

Interestingly, as I have said before, I have spent some time in the Marine Corps where we have taken belittling and "tearing down" to an art form. However, no matter how many times we were told we were crap and couldn't find our ass with both hands, we still felt some kinship in that we were all Marines. There was still a certain amount of respect for the fact that you had made it through the process to earn the title. There doesn't seem to be that camaraderie in nursing.

As a student, it is really annoying. I mean, we normally feel stupid enough as it is, we don't need fellow nurses reinforcing it. I personally think that if we are ever going to beat the subservient nurse stereotype we need to have strong confident nurses and belittling students and newbies isn't going to help.

Last Day!

2005-04-17T20:43:00.000-04:00

Monday is our last day of community health clinicals. We still have a paper to write and a presentation to do next week, but we don't have to go back to the clinical site. I can hardly contain my excitement. Seriously. I'm looking forward to going only because it is the last time I have to go!

Spring is here, the weather is nice, only 2 papers and finals to go.....it's all good.....

Totally inappropriate behavior

2005-04-10T18:13:00.000-04:00

I'm not really quite for sure where the actions in the following story could be considered appropriate, certainly not in an institute of higher learning.

I just found out that a few weeks ago, one of the nursing students ("Port Wine Stain, PWS, I've blogged about her before) flipped off a professor during class. She did it behind her back, but the TA saw it. Apparently she was asked to stop talking during class (a reasonable request) and she decided that she didn't want to and used her middle finger to express her dissatisfaction with the request. I mean really, how could you ever think that that was a acceptable response?? But this is the same person who is a bit overweight, especially in her gut, and still chooses to wear junior size low riders and belly shirts. Therefore, we are all often subject to looking at her flab, and quite often to her butt crack. In fact, I've seen more of her butt crack than some of my patients. It is gross. If you have belly flab, please don't wear things that let it hang out. I mean, I have cellulite on my thighs and I try to not show it off too much. I consider it a community service!

That is all.

She Quit

2005-04-02T17:42:00.000-05:00

My clinical instructor, the one with the hat, quit. She resigned last week. No explanation given. We turned in papers to her like 3 weeks ago, we've not gotten them back and have no grades for them. We now have a new clinical instructor and our old one didn't do any type of turnover or anything. Nice. I have to say that this is one of the most screwed up operations I have ever been a part of.

Back to the grind....study questions to complete......

Did you know.....

2005-03-31T20:07:00.000-05:00

Did you know that men can get a thing called "retrograde ejaculation" where when they ejaculate, it goes backward into their bladder??

No good clinical stories

2005-03-28T22:23:00.000-05:00

I apologize for the lack of interesting clinical stories. My clinicals are very boring and no one really wants to hear stories about old men with heart problems and bad breath. But stand by, there is potential for more fire jumping stories!

Exams last week

2005-03-28T21:59:00.000-05:00

Last week we had two exams, one in Maternal/Newborn health and the other in our "Intro to Nursing" class. Maternal/Newborn was relatively straight forward, but Intro to Nursing sucked bad. It is kind of a philosophy of nursing class, the book for the class is called "The Art of Nursing." Supposedly, it is one of the things that makes the Bachelor degree program different from the Associate degree program. Well, they can have it. It sucks. I love the professor, she is nice, very smart and very competent. She is actually one of my favorite faculty in the School of Nursing. She has great stories, and is very realistic of what we should be doing as nurses and what should be expected and what we should expect as new nurses. BUT, her class SUCKS!! We spend hours discussing things like the difference between caring and compassion and the difference between spirituality and religion. Gag. She assigns chapters in the book and also research and clinical articles that we have to read. The class is divided into 3 different sections with 3 different professors. However, we all have the same test. That means she can only test off of the readings. Well, what if your class discusses the article differently??? Then you are screwed on the test. And her questions???? Totally ambiguous. Usually, you can adequately rationalize at least 2 of the choices. One of my friends summed it up nicely by saying, "It is kind of like the question is, Which color is teal more like? and your two choices are A. Blue and B. Green." At least it is only a one credit hour class each semester, so it can't hurt your GPA too bad.

Happy 21st Morgan!
Welcome Home, Alex!

Back to the Grind

2005-03-21T21:48:00.000-05:00

Spring Break is over. Darn. Let the stupidity begin again!!

Dogs in class

2005-03-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

Last week, one of the students brought her dog to class. I find that a bit odd, and I am a dog lover. Not an assistance dog, just her regular old dog. She says she forgot what time class started. How do you forget what time class starts when it has been the same for the past 3 months? And it was a stupid looking dog too, a pug/beagle mix. She calls it a puggle. Just dumb. Almost as dumb my clinical instructors hat. Kind of the same color too.

Just in time for a break....

2005-03-10T21:28:00.000-05:00

So, last week I had 3 papers due and one exam. Kind of sucks since I only really have class 2 days a week. I have clinicals 2 days a week also, and with the commute time to those, I ended up burning the midnight oil and drinking a lot of coffee to get it all done. One of the papers was a group thing for my community health clinical. Yeah, the clinical I hate with a passion and if I could get away with quitting I would. Needless to say, no one in my group had any motivation to get that paper done. It was due on Monday and two of the three of us were going to be gone for the weekend. It was also a big sports weekend for my prestigious university, so group member #3 was going to be busy with that. We decided that we would get most of the paper finished by Friday and then just look it over Sunday night for last minute changes. That plan went all to hell when I had to take one of our group members to the emergency room following a mishap involving bonfires and alcohol. She will forever now be known as "Fire Jumper." Unfortunately for the sole remaining member, she had to do all the finishing touches. The paper turned out pretty good, Fire Jumper is all fixed up and on her way to Spring Break in Europe, and I have been enjoying a week of not much work.

On Monday, I got into a pissing match with my community health clinical instructor. We have to do an "intervention" for this class that has something to do with the community we are serving through our clinical site. My clinical site is a cardiac rehab center in a local hospital. The participants come in and complete an hour long class 3 days a week for 12 weeks. The program is very scheduled and was developed to make sure it meets Medicare guidelines so most of the participants will have insurance pay. I am sharing this site with Fire Jumper so we have to come up with two different interventions. Our preceptor (the nurse we work for) gave us two really good ideas that will also help them update their program materials. I briefed these two ideas at our post clinical conference and my instructor (see previous post regarding the stupid hat) shot them both down stating that they don't have enough teaching time involved. When does she think we have teaching time??? Like I have explained to her numerous times, this is a scheduled program designed to meet the requirements for Medicare. I can't just come in one day and say, "I'd like to change your program today so that I can meet the stupid requirements for my school project." She can't seem to grasp this fact! Also, there are other students who fulfilled their "intervention" by putting together a science fair style tri-fold bulletin board and putting it in the lobby. So, I'm supposed to teach a class and they do arts and crafts??? I hate to be the geek who quotes the syllabus, but there is nothing in there about our interventions having to be periods of instruction. And to top it off, Fire Jumper wasn't there that day (she was recovering from the fire incident) and I was trying to look out for her with regards to the intervention. My stupid hat wearing clinical instructor told me to just worry about me and she will work with Fire Jumper on her intervention. So I am supposed to just kick her to the curb?? I don't think so, I don't work like that. She and I are going to have it out before the end of the semester!

This week we also had one last skills lab. The one we have been waiting for all semester. We learned how to start IV's and draw blood. We had previously done a virtual reality thing to practice, but on Tuesday, we got to do the real thing. We started slow, stabbing the fake arm and the practice veins. Then we moved on to the real thing...each other. Everyone got the chance to start an IV on their lab partner. I had a great partner, she got a vein on the first try. This is amazing, as my difficult veins have caused grown men to cry trying to start IV's or draw blood.

Spring Break starts next week. Our Friday class got cancelled since our professor assumed no one would show up anyway. She's probably right. I wish I were going to be lounging on a beach somewhere drinking margaritas, but I need some money (and I'm a responsible reservist), so I will be donning the tree suit and impersonating a Marine officer for the week. I will enjoy the week off from school, do something I like doing and understand, and maybe even try to get ahead on school work (HA HA)!!

One down, One to go

2005-03-02T23:27:00.000-05:00

Tonight was my last night in my Maternal/Newborn Health clinical. I have to say that I think I will miss going. This is a big step for me. I'm just not the ooing, awwing type over babies. I think they are cute, but I don't feel the need to stop and hold every one I see and I also don't feel the need to talk baby talk. So I kind of thought that I would have a hard time with this clinical thinking that it would be all sugary sweet and everything. I have to say that I had a good time!! I think it was more due to my clinical instructor (who is awesome!) and my fellow students. Don't get me wrong, I still have no desire to be a labor and delivery/nursery/postpartum nurse!!

Unfortunately, I do have another two months or so of my community health clinical. That clinical just plain sucks. It is boring, we don't have a mission, there is no focus, and my clinical instructor sucks pretty bad. We have a paper due on Monday and I have no desire to work on it. For the first time in a very long time, I will do the minimum amount to get by and be done with it. I can't even describe how bad my clinical instructor sucks. She doesn't pass along pertinent information, she never comes to see us at our clincal sites, she never answers our phone calls (despite the fact her phone is surgically attached to her face) or emails, and she wears THE STUPIDEST HAT I HAVE EVER SEEN!!! She wears this hat that kind of looks like the hats the dwarves wore in Snow White only it is made out of fake fur. And she wears it ALL THE TIME. Inside, outside, cold, hot.....ALL THE TIME! Sometimes I can't get passed the hat and all I hear coming out of her mouth sounds like the teacher from the Peanuts cartoons.

One week till Spring Break!!!! Don't get any ideas, I'm not doing anything cool.

Losing Patients

2005-02-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

One of the tough lessons to learn in nursing school is that unfortunately some of your patients are going to die and you have to figure out how you are going to deal with it. You would think it would not be as difficult since we only usually see our patients one day a week. But, some of us found out last week and this week that it still really sucks.

Last week, one of my friends handed me a newspaper article from our school paper. It was an obituary for one of our patients from last semester. She was a student and had been very sick with chronic illnesses that seemed to compound each other. We had discharged her late last year in relatively good health, so it was a bit of a surprise to read that she had passed away. She had spent quite a long time on our floor and so we really got to know her. Even though she was a bit of a pain in the ass, she was smart and had made the most of her life depsite many disabilities. Anyway, she was my first patient to die.

One of my other friends had a patient die on her today. She is working in a Hospice House, so patients dying is to be expected. This still doesn't make it any easier. Here is what she wrote in her clinical journal (we email this out to everyone in our clinical group):

"We walked in and the nurse, looking at the patient, said "this isn't good." The patient's eyes were half open and he was not blinking; his breathing was very shallow and his fingers were blue. She tried to get a blood pressure and couldn't, then went to call the family. He died 15 minutes later while we sat in the room with him. She encouraged him to "go ahead and let go", telling him that she had called his wife and daughter and they were on their way, and that he didn't have to wait for them - he could go on without them. And he did, moments before they got there. I was really saddened by the event, especially because his family wasn't there with him when it happened. But I was glad that we were, so that he wasn't alone. I
didn't really like the business aspect of what happens after a patient dies (cleaning him up, doing the paper work, throwing away all of the extra supplies, calling the funeral home), because it seemed like two minutes ago all was somber and quiet, almost reverent, he dies, and then we turn all of the lights on and start getting him ready for his family, throwing things away, taking out his foley, etc. I understand why, it just felt weird...too business like."

Sorry for the "not funniness" of this post. There haven't been too many funny things going on at school. The same people are stupid, the same people are doing stupid things and saying stupid things! I think we are becoming immune to them. When most of them talk, all I hear is the voice of the teacher on the Charlie Brown cartoons.

And for even less funniness for me, but probably funny for others, I am going to have to have a wisdom tooth pulled tomorrow. After years and years and years of it not doing anything (I only have one), it has decided to now push through my gums. And hey, it feels great. Nice, couldn't do it when I had free dental care, NOOOOOO, it has to do it when I have NO DENTAL COVERAGE. At least I only have one exam this week.

Happy February birthday to Megan, Jennifer, and Pablo!!

Clinicals Saga Continues

2005-02-05T18:31:00.000-05:00

So, I was sitting around on Thursday thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if I knew where I was going to go to clinical on Monday?" And low and behold, there was actually an email from my community health clinical instructor telling me that my orginal assignment had been cancelled (I had never gone anyway) and that I now was going to go to a cardiac rehab site. That's it. No other info. No directions, no instructions, no point of contact, nothing. Then on Friday, I got another email and all it says is, "I haven't heard from your preceptor yet, but just be at the lobby of the hospital at 900." That's it. Again, no point of contact, and not even WHICH HOSPITAL TO GO TO! There are several in the area. I have emailed requesting clarification, but I'm not expecting any response. There usually isn't. This should be interesting.

Update

2005-01-30T16:18:00.000-05:00

Since I haven't written in a while, here's an update:

Maternal/Newborn Health: the class is pretty good. Who knew there were SO MANY videos of women giving birth! My clinicals are also pretty good. I'm at a small hospital which has is ads and disads. They only have about 110 births a month and unfortunately if none of those happen on a Wednesday, I won't get to assist during one. Good thing is, plenty of free parking. Too bad it is an hour drive from my house.

Community Health: the class is also pretty good. My clinicals suck!!!! There has been some kind of legal snafu between my university and my clinical site. There are three of us assigned there and we weren't allowed to go last week and we won't be allowed to go this week. This sucks since we have papers and projects that we have to complete. Those projects will be very difficult to complete if we have no clinical site!!!!

Nursing Research: I have this 3 hour class right after lunch. It makes a wonderful place to take a nap. No offense to researchers, but 3 hours a week on how to conduct research and write it up, is way, way boring.

The other thing going on is that we are in the process of applying for student nurse externships for the summer. We have to complete at least 200 hours of work as either a nurse extern or a nurse aid this summer. The application process has been a real pain in the butt. Most all want clinical references on their own special forms. This wouldn't be that bad, but most of us only have one or maybe two people who can give us clinical references. Unfortunately for them, those people have been stuck writting many, many letters all with different requirements. I feel bad for them, but they had to know this was coming!

That's about all. Coolest thing happened last week in my nursing research class. The professor kindly asked two girls who were talking incessantly to please stop. A few minutes later when they had not, she less than kindly asked them to leave her class. It was beautiful! I wish it were done more often. Perhaps then, some of my fellow students would be able to develop some manners!

Nothing

2005-01-18T21:46:00.000-05:00

Before I get nasty emails for not posting anything, there isn't anything to post. We started classes last week and they are ok. I think they are better than last semester, but that wouldn't be too hard. But right now I have nothing to complain about with respect to nursing school! I'm sure that will change over the next two weeks as clinical rotations start!

Helo Ride Along and the first day of classes

2005-01-12T22:00:00.000-05:00

I spent all day yesterday doing a ride along with the EMS helo at our hospital. It was great! I am sure that it is really what I want to do.

Today was the first day of classes for the Spring 2005 semester. It sucked. We expected it to suck, so at least we weren't disappointed. This semester my two clinical classes are Maternal/Newborn Health (read birthin' babies) and Community Health. My community health rotation is going to be with the EPA, so that might acutally be interesting. I have absolutely no interest in labor and delivery. But, I am sure that I will have a ready supply of interesting stories for you all!

Story of the week: I wasn't there, but the person who told me this story was personally involved and it definitely meets the icky story requirement to be posted. A Nurse Practitioner working at a county jail facility had an inmate come into her office complaining of burning, itching, and a discharge from her vagina. She assumed "the position" for a physical exam and while the NP is examining her she says, "Hey doc, while you are down there can you check to see if I left a $20 bill in my cooch?" She was serious. Apparently before going to a party where she was sure she was going to get mugged, she decided to carry her cash in her "built in wallet". She forgot how much she had put in and wasn't sure if she got it all out.

There are several points to this story: 1. You hear wacky stuff when you work in a jail. 2. If you are going to store your money in your vagina, remember how much you put in. 3. It might be a good idea to put your money in a plastic bag before you shove it in. And 4. Money is a WHOLE lot dirtier than you ever imagined!!

And finally, one more note for your education. Things that are bad: a cough, rectal bleeding, and cocaine.

Financial Aid and my Birthday

2005-01-09T20:05:00.000-05:00

I'm starting this semester off great. Today was my birthday and so as a present to myself I decided to fill out my financial aid forms for next year. Hey what a great present! I found out that despite the fact that I am a drilling reservist with the US Marine Corps and therefore occassionally get a paycheck, my adjusted income last year was NEGATIVE! Yes, NEGATIVE. They couldn't even calculate an expected family contribution, I have to go see my Financial Aid Administrator. So I guess this means that I can take out more loans and then have to pay back more later on. Yeah me.

3 more days until classes start. Tuesday I am doing a ride along with the Air Care helo. This is what I think I really want to do, so I am really excited!

Update: There were no, and will be no, spankings. Real nice, Kevin.

On Vacation

2004-12-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, but the Pissed Off Student Nurses are on their much deserved winter break. Note the political correctness of the "winter break." Anyway, several of us are working and most are visiting family members and future family members. Just in case anyone was wondering, we all passed all of our classes and are very, very glad that the semester is over. Don't look for anymore posts until mid January! Hey, everyone needs a break!

Happy New Year!

Our last exam

2004-12-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is our last final exam for this semester!!!! We are so relieved for this semester to be over. There are only 50 questions on this exam, so most of us are planning on being finished in about 30 minutes or so. Then it is off to a local Mexican restaurant for lunch and many, many margaritas.

I have to say that, on the whole, our exams have been mostly fair. Our first two were difficult, but most of us expected that. One class was just plain impossible to study for and no one does well on the tests. One of those where you just have to be able to think like the instructor to pick the correct answer. It had questions like, "The proper nursing intervention that would show caring and cultural competence would be...." and then it lists 4 choices that could be correct in any given situation. You have to pick the "bestest" according to the instructor. Another example, "Your patient asks you to stay and pray with her. What would be the best intervention?" There were two obviously wrong choices and the other two were "close the door for privacy and pray with your patient" or "call for an chaplain or spiritual leader to pray with your patient." Well, depending on your personal preference for praying, you might do one or the other. If you are comfortable praying and it is within your personal beliefs and practices, then hey, go ahead and pray. But, if praying is not something you are comfortable with or is not part of your personal beliefs, then it would be appropriate to do a spiritual consult for your patient. So which answer is right????
Our test on Friday that I complained about studying for in the last post was horrible. 125 questions. I finished in about an hour. Apparently the class average was 79%. That is pretty bad for us. It was so bad that the "course coordinator" posted the grades, got so many complaints about them that she took the grades down and is "re-evaluating her scores". Read that to mean there is going to be a curve! Now, don't worry, this class really had nothing to do with the life and death of our patients. Us not doing well will have absolutely NO effet on our ability to provide competent nursing care.

So, most of us survived and will return in January to start this all over again! I will try to post one more time before we go on break, but in case I don't have Happy Holidays!

Final Exams

2004-12-09T23:12:00.000-05:00

So, right now we are in the middle of final exams. We have one a day for 5 days. I'm not complaining, we could have had more than one a day. And the student services people, who are normally harassing us, have provided coffee, tea, and hot chocolate every morning. We have had two exams so far. They were not easy at all! I didn't expect them to be, they should be hard. One was our basic skills class and the other was our adult health class. Tomorrow we have our growth and development class. Now, I have spent more hours reviewing my notes for this exam than any of my others. This is stupid. I am more concerned about a class that should have been offered as an on-line correspondence course than the ones who actually may have an effect on the life or death of my patients. I've talked about this class before, the one where we do skits on Friday afternoons.....yeah, that one. There is no correlation between the way the class is taught and the difficulty of the tests. The tests are those kind where you look at questions and ask yourself if you are in the right class. Questions about topics that you don't recall anyone discussing in class or it being in the reading. Then there is the book. OH MY GOD. I can't believe it was actually published. It is poorly organized, poorly written, even poorly edited. THERE ARE SPELLING MISTAKES AND TYPOS IN IT. This is a book that I had to pay $74 for USED!

Last rant for this entry: our final today was difficult. But the thing that annoyed me the most (besides the construction noise outside the classroom and the opening of candy wrappers inside) was the shear volume of typos, spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, and just plain mistakes in the test. We had to do some drug dosage questions. Many didn't have the correct units or even units that stayed consistent. Questions with everything in milligrams and all the answers are in milliliters for caplet form meds??? There were even two questions that were exactly the same. Exactly the same, like cut and paste. Obviously, no one proofed this test before they printed it. That is just unacceptable. If I am going to pay the amount of money I am for this school and spend the amount of time I spend studying, I don't think it is too much to ask for the professors to proof read their final exams.

Back to the studying....Freud....Erikson....Piaget.....I DON'T CARE!!!!

Skills Lab Evals

2004-12-02T19:26:00.000-05:00

One of our main classes this semester was our basic skills class. Following completion of this course, we will be Certified Nurses Aides II. During the course of the semester we had 4 practical skills evaluations. Basically, we performed selected basic skills while being watched by a graduate student TA who decided that you either did the skill correctly or you needed to redo the skill. You have 3 chances to pass all the skills, if you fail any one of them 3 times, you are dropped from the class. This class also happens to be a prerequisite for all of the other nursing courses. Therefore, if you are dropped, you cannot continue in the regular course progression and will have to enter the "extended studies" program.
So, today, I had my final skills evaluation. I had the easiest evaluator so, of course, I passed. Not that I didn't know how to do the skills! There are evaluators who are considerably more stringent. We have a serious problem with consistency. There is one evaluator who pretty much passes everyone and one who pretty much fails everyone. The problem with this is there is a wide range of competency in basic skills. Some people can maintain the hell out of a sterile field and some couldn't find their way out of a sterile glove. This seems to be a recurring theme at this school.....
I have great faith that "they system" will weed out the idiots eventually!

End of Clinicals Eval

2004-11-30T17:39:00.000-05:00

Well, I said I would post after my clinical evaluation. Unfortunately, I have nothing interesting to say. I went, she said I did well and then I left. No major revelations, but that isn't a shock. Oh, she also gave us our "big" paper back. I got an excellent grade, also not a shock. Not because I am such an excellent student but because my clinical instructor can't do anything mean. I don't think she gave anyone a bad grade, even if they deserved it. I am finding that there is no consistency in the standards at this school. They are downright anal about some things, but other (equally important) things are very slack. So for all of you non-medical types out there reading, if the standards are this varied in one school, imagine what they are like between schools! This means that there is a wide range of competency in the nursing world. Could be kind of scary........

We are baking cookies and stuff tonight to say thank you to the staff of the floor we did our clinical rotation on. We are spending a lot of time thanking people for doing their job and letting us watch. Oh yeah, and letting us change dirty bed linens and wipe nasty butts and measure out liquid stool. Wait, shouldn't they be making us cookies????

Thanksgiving, end of semester, and other stuff

2004-11-29T23:27:00.000-05:00

So, we just returned from a nice long break for Thanksgiving. Some of us were lucky and got the whole week off to spend with our families. Others weren't as lucky, oh well, it all comes around eventually.
This week we have our "End of Clinicals Evaluations". This is an opportunity for your clinical instructor to tell you what you did right and wrong over the semester. If the mid-term clinical evals are any indicator, I will hear such excellent comments as, "You are trying to learn this info too fast, you need to slow down and enjoy it." Yes, that was very helpful. Listen, this is my second degree and my second career. My first career sometimes moved at the speed of light, it was either learn it and move on or get run over. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with making sure you have a good handle on things like giving shots and starting IV's, but I don't see why I need to "slow down and enjoy" changing bed linens, wiping people's butts, changing adult diapers, or giving someone a bath. I am fascinated to see what pearl of wisdom my clinical instructor comes up with next! I also got marked as the best mark on almost all categories. The reason I was given for why I didn't get the best mark on everything was that if I had, I would be able to do my clinical instructor's job. Well, not really. I may do an above average job of being a nursing student, but that doesn't mean that I would do an above average job of being a nurse. It is all relative......more to follow on the end of clinical eval......
And finally, it is time for final exams. I'm sure this will generate much hate and discontent.....stay tuned!

Skits in college

2004-11-20T10:36:00.000-05:00

Here at our prestigious 4 year university nationally ranked nursing school, we have to take a class on human and family growth and development. It is really a psychology course and should be an online course. We have it for 3 hours at one shot in the evening. It sucks, it is boring, and one of the instructors is just not very good. She is very stuck on the middle class, married, 2.3 children model which is not very realistic in the real world. She gets all huffy if you try to defend a family model that is anything different. Anyway, we had to read a book about cultural differences in health care for this class. Good book, good idea to read it, could have discussed it in one class and been done with it. Did we do that? Nooooooooo! We had to drag this thing out over 4 small group discussion sessions and then, this is the best part, present an "Oprah-style" skit to the class summing up your opinions. A SKIT. We are in college and we are doing skits. Honestly, I am paying to go to a school for a professional education and I am being treated like I am in middle school. It wasn't worth the 10 minutes my group spent planning it, it wasn't worth the 7 minutes it took to present it. Then to top it all off, they made us take a group picture at the end. I swear, it was like I was back in the Girl Scouts at a campfire!!!!

Hey, only 18 months left to graduation!!!!!

Mmm, immunity

2004-11-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

This is a hilarious addition to the story of thousand-breasted immunity.
When my brother was a student, he lived in an international dorm. There was a girl on his floor from Cameroon, Africa, and she was really a nice girl. Well, everyone in this little dorm started getting sick with this flu-like ailment, and my brother and this girl decided to have a competition on who would stay healthier longer. See, my brother had the immunity of every woman who's creamy breast milk he had devoured voraciously as a preemie; The Cameroonian girl had great immunity because she had actually had every disease- malaria, typhus, hep. A, and a myriad of other tropical diseases.
In the end, my brother got sick first, but he recovered after 3 days, the Cameroonian girl got sick after that and missed class for a week. So there you go- breasts are more than just a lot of jiggly fun

Celine signing off

Yolanda likes balls...

2004-11-18T13:17:00.000-05:00

I would have loved, LOVED to help with your wet to dry dressings on the scrotum. Nothing says "hey there, how are you doing today?" to your patient like ripping the dead skin off a wound.
I am glad that the rotation at "that floor" is over! I hated that damn place, it was full of poor people and Lepers and old crazy people. I am so glad to be rid of it, good riddance, you bastards!! No more gaping, fat, stinkin' vaginas! No more necrotic, rotting, putrid stasis ulcers and NO MORE of that fake, old, hypertensive, overly emotional, slow talking, fake red headed BITCH! Ahh, that felt good.

See you guys later.

Celine sucks.

2004-11-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

Thanks a lot for not being there for clinicals tomorrow Celine. Now you won't be able to help me with my patient who has GANGRENE OF THE SCROTUM. Yes that is right, you read it correctly. Wet to dry dressings twice a day.....ohhhhh what fun!!!!!!!

Yeah, I'm pissed....

2004-11-16T18:54:00.000-05:00

So, I had the joy of turning 21 this past Sunday, and instead of having a good ole time getting shit faced, instead I was at the urgent care clinic getting diagnosed with STREP THROAT! What the hell? And, since I went home so my mommy could take care of me, I didn't bring any work or anything to study.
But, as a sliver lining to the cloud...there is a God in heaven, I am sure of it now. I went to the ABC store and told the clerk it was my first time, and he gave me 5 free mini bottles and a key chain...and no, I didn't sleep with him. I can't drink it though, because I am now on antibiotics!
The bonus of Strep is that I got out of clinicals...though, technically, after 24 hours of Antibiotic treatment, I am no longer contagious and I am free and clear to do whatever I want. But hey, if the instructor with her MSN doesn't know that, then I am not going to tell her....

Long time no write

2004-11-11T18:47:00.000-05:00

So, I got yelled at yesterday for not blogging. We are busy here at nursing school, you know! We have finals coming up and several papers have been due in the past couple of weeks. Things are starting to get tense as the semester winds down. This week many of us had an interesting experience. We had to wear ostomy bags around for the day. For those who don't know, an ostomy can be where part of your intestine is pulled through your skin and you defecate through that. They attach a bag to it (on the outside) and it collects the feces. Sounds kind of gross, but many people have these for a variety of medical reasons. In order to have us sort of understand what it is like to wear one, we did it for a day. I have to say that it was hot and itchy and my clothes didn't fit quite right. Fortunately for me, it wasn't filled with feces and I could take it off at the end of the day!

Other things we have learned lately:

Celine loves sex and doesn't mind talking about it with anyone.
Cocaine is bad according to our Pharmacology professor.
PWS (a fellow student) is an idiot and should be shot and hopefully will not pass her NCLEX and will never become a practicing nurse.
Lovenox shots suck - both giving and receiving.
My patient's dog, Tippy, was not in my patient's hospital room this week.
APA format from 2004 and from 2005 is NOT the same.
The most important thing Celine learned a few weeks ago in our most useless class was that the Japanese put a special sticker on the cars that old people drive.
Just because you are in a professional education program doesn't mean you know how to act like an adult.
And finally, if you don't get the pilot light lit to your heater by the gas company when they turn your gas on, they won't come back and do it later. This is important because it is frickin' cold here!

Happy Birthday to the US Marine Corps (10 Nov) and Thank You to all of our Veterans!

Quote 'O' the Day

2004-10-30T18:20:00.000-04:00

During our most hated Friday afternoon class, Celine told us about her brother who was fed with "donor milk" when he was in the NICU as a baby. Who knew they had breast milk banks? The quote 'o' the day is "My brother now has the immunity of a thousand breasts." She claims he never gets sick, so maybe there is something to it.....

Welcome

2004-10-24T13:14:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Pissed Off Student Nurses! On this blog you will see nursing students at a 4 year university complain about their professors, their administration, and most often about their fellow students. This is meant to be a way for us to vent our frustrations and share some of the more stupid things that happen everyday. All the names have been changed to protect the stupid and the mean. Feel free to comment, but we probably won't respond to any of the comments. Posts will not be consistent, we are busy people! And please don't take this blog the wrong way, we all very much want to be nurses and are looking forward to joining an exciting profession!

Test #2

2004-10-22T16:33:00.000-04:00

Test #2