Hi, kdream!
The first thing you can do is print out a copy of the
Student Clinical Report Sheet for one patient that is at the bottom of my post. It is actually a link to a Word Document. If it doesn't open up for you, PM (private message) me. This will help you organize the information you will need to get through your clinical day with a patient.
On the medical unit(s) you are going to see a lot of different patient problems. Depending on the size of the hospital facility you are going to, there may be specialty medical units where there may be patients who have only diseases involving one specific system of the body (neuro, heart, GI, renal). Or, if smaller, you will see a mix of everything from soup to nuts. The major illnesses that people are hospitalized for on medical units, in general, are pneumonia, COPD, strokes, congestive heart failure, various GI problems. Respiratory diseases are one of the biggest reasons for hospitalization, so you should have some understanding of the different conditions that comprise COPD. Strokes are also very, very common and patients experience many different complications as a result of them. You will also see a lot of patients with different types of heart failure. Underlying all that will be other complicating problems. Diabetes mellitus is the biggest, so know about it, it's treatments and complications. Others you will see are dehydration and various infections, especially UTIs.
On surgical units these days you're only going to see patients who have to be hospitalized for a few days or more since many more surgeries are being done on an outpatient basis than they used to be. Still, your nursing textbook should have a chapter(s) on the patient undergoing surgery. You need to read and be familiar with those concepts. A patient undergoing anesthesia is subject to a number of potential complications and you need to know what they are so you can be monitoring for signs and symptoms of them as well as performing nursing interventions to prevent them. These should be addressed in your nursing textbook. Wound healing is also a concern. These patients will also need discharge teaching. Patients come back from surgery with a lot of different tubes coming out of incisions and you will need to learn how to care for them. They need pain relief and some wound care. Hopefully, you will also get the opportunity to observe some actual surgery in the OR. It will help you understand the preparations you make for patients pre-surgery and the care you give post-surgery.
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