Clinicals and surgery

are you competely sure you can't get that surgery done sooner? it seems unlikely that there's no flexibility in the surgery schedule thre or four months out. beg. ask to be put on a wait list, tell them you only need a day's notice to appear, npo and ready to go.

as to the schools, they have heard of the ada and will have to accommodate your mobility issues for classroom and campus access. by fall you should have a good handle on wheelchair mobility, if necessary, or for adaptive techniques for ambulation. tell them before you arrive if you think there will be a problem with classroom access, etc.

you might have a problem with clinicals, though. most hospitals and facilities will not allow caregivers on crutches or in wheelchairs, so you might see if they will let you make up time over vacation. you might be ok if all you have is a brace, and even those will come off soon. good luck!

Thanks for responding! I'm not at all worried about the classroom, it's all clinical. Since the first part is accelerated, clinicals start right after the semester starts. The NP at my ortho clinic was supposed to call me to go over recovery time and all that with me, but I have yet to hear from her.

I would try to get your surgery moved up. Find another surgeon if you have to. Clinicals are hard work and even if you are out of braces and cast, you may not be physically ready. If you have to, Im sure you can delay a semester?

I would check into deferred admission. Moving patients, making beds, bathing require as much of your body mechanics as possible. I don't thinking going into cliniicals during a major healing process would be too good.

In my clinicals, I was told that I wouldn't be able to go if I didn't heal really fast from an injury I had that placed me in a walking boot. My teacher told me that it wasn't that I couldn't be on my feet all day but that it was unhygenic. If you're in a cast or brace or wheelchair, it'll be hard to disinfect those things after clinicals. At least, that was my professor's argument. Not that I necessarily agree.

Thanks for the advice. I called the surgical coordinator again and she said there are still no available dates earlier than June 19. I do not want to find a new surgeon because the surgery is complicated and I have already gone through four, the other three all referred me to other ones because they didn't want to touch me. I left another message for the NP, so hopefully she will get back to me soon.

You should certainly contact the programs and the campus disability offices. I don't know how much accomodation they're required to extend given that the job of a bedside RN requires a minimum level of physical function.

To be frank, without some significant accomodation, it's hard to imagine you being successful in clinicals. Perhaps the programs have some means to delay your clinical rotations while still permitting you to begin the program.

I would start with the disability offices and proceed from there.