A bit of advice for UT Houston Bacc2 students

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thinking back to my first clinical i would like to provide some advice for those of you about to enter the program.

some people may not agree with this advice but i stand by this: you will do your first careplan on a med/surg floor. you will go the day before to gather information about the patient and then create a careplan that is about 10-15 pages in length. you will have to have that careplan done before you go to the first clinical day, done the night before.

so, where am i going with this? when i did this, i picked a patient and wrote down all the meds and started at 8:00 in the evening, i finished at 4:00 in the morning and slept an hour and then went work a 12 hour day. it was hell.

how does this help me?

i will answer, when you pick a patient, look at the MAR for the number of drugs. pick the patient based on the number of drugs. the bulk of my care plan was spent researching drugs. don't get a patient with 20 drugs, 15 or 10 drug. don't kill yourself doing this, you will have plenty of chances to research drug. it just sets a bad tone for the rest of the clinical. you are going to be so overwhelmed with getting the care plan written, working with patients and getting oriented, you don't need to kill yourself with a bunch of drug research.

this is just my advice, some may disagree, others may think that it is laziness on my part. i just don't want y'all staying up all night, getting an hour of sleep and on your feet for 12 hours. i have never been a believer in the idea of "i did it so you should go through it also". this does seem to be a common way of thinking in nursing school, i want things to be better for those that come after me. hit me up if you have other questions.

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thinking back to my first clinical i would like to provide some advice for those of you about to enter the program.

some people may not agree with this advice but i stand by this: you will do your first careplan on a med/surg floor. you will go the day before to gather information about the patient and then create a careplan that is about 10-15 pages in length. you will have to have that careplan done before you go to the first clinical day, done the night before.

so, where am i going with this? when i did this, i picked a patient and wrote down all the meds and started at 8:00 in the evening, i finished at 4:00 in the morning and slept an hour and then went work a 12 hour day. it was hell.

how does this help me?

i will answer, when you pick a patient, look at the MAR for the number of drugs. pick the patient based on the number of drugs. the bulk of my care plan was spent researching drugs. don't get a patient with 20 drugs, 15 or 10 drug. don't kill yourself doing this, you will have plenty of chances to research drug. it just sets a bad tone for the rest of the clinical. you are going to be so overwhelmed with getting the care plan written, working with patients and getting oriented, you don't need to kill yourself with a bunch of drug research.

this is just my advice, some may disagree, others may think that it is laziness on my part. i just don't want y'all staying up all night, getting an hour of sleep and on your feet for 12 hours. i have never been a believer in the idea of "i did it so you should go through it also". this does seem to be a common way of thinking in nursing school, i want things to be better for those that come after me. hit me up if you have other questions.

I'm no future accelerated BSN student, but does this also apply to the regular/traditional/generic BSN students?

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i am not sure. the bacc2 people kick off in the summer and hit the ground running. all i can say is the regular program people always looked happier and less stressed than we did.

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Amen. So true.

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Yes, it applies to the regular program as well. Care plans were my least favorite part of nursing school. The group projects were next!

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