RE: Last semster help!!

suzy253, RN · Aug 14, 2005

We've got leadership in last semester as well. Haven't ordered the book yet but we've been advised to get "Essentials of Nursing Leadership & Management" by Tappen, Weiss & Whithead; FA Davis, Philadelphia. Hope this helps some.

yvonneladonna · Aug 14, 2005

thanks i'll check that out. as for med surg I've already started reading hematology- they posted the assignment up!! do you know any ways to sharpen my critical thinking??

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Aug 18, 2005

I think that perhaps what you are seeking is how to do some prioritizing. Is this the kind of thing you're looking for?

Remember that you need to use your nursing process. Collect data before assessing. Ask questions about a situation as part of your data collection. Recall that in many disease and physiologic processes, things progress (or fail) in a step by step fashion. Where can you place the patient in those steps at this particular time?

Make up scenarios and try to figure out how you would handle them. When I was in nursing school years ago we had a cute little board game to help us with making decisions. The board was a layout of a hospital floor with patient rooms, pantry, nurses lounge, linen closet, etc. We had cards that were emergency situations that came up. We also had patient cards. We each had to pick a certain number of patient cards that had various diagnoses listed on them. We had to plan our actions to get all our care done, but had to pick a card from the situation card pile with every turn. A doctor calls with an order, Mr. Smith in 201 has fallen, admitting calls to tell you of an admission you are getting who needs oxygen set up before he even gets to the room. You can put together this kind of game for yourself and work at it with your fellow students. It's fun and it creates thought and discussion about this idea of prioritizing. Sit around with your classmates and everybody take a turn at coming up with a new little crisis that can occur and discuss how you would deal with it.

I hope that helps you. Until you actually get on a job situation it's a little hard to practice this.