clinicals

PJMommy · Aug 15, 2003

Good ones or bad ones?

The best... when a patient tells you that you are the best nurse he/she has had. Yeah, yeah...I know every student nurse is told this...but something inside you glows because the patient called you a "nurse" and not a "student". :)

A bad one... ugh...I dropped a stack of those little paper pill cups -- full of crushed meds I was going to administer via g-tube. I had no idea which meds were history and which were still good. Had to dump the whole mess and start over. Some were narcs so had to go through the process of documenting the wastage. sigh...you live, you learn.

twarlik · Aug 15, 2003

If you haven't visited it yet, Code Blog has a lot of fun stories about nurses and nursing students. Should fulfill some of your need! :)

tomorrows RN · Aug 15, 2003

PJMommy-

Thanks for sharing. I know that glowing feeling your talking about. I'm a CNA of 5yrs. now, and when a patient calls me "nurse" I get a feeling of joy, because there are alot of times when some one had said,"your just an aide" boy if they really knew how awful that makes one feel, because cnas are always busting A**!!

Thanks again for sharing

tomorrows RN · Aug 16, 2003

twarlik-

Thanks for your suggestion. I found that site to be pretty interesting. But I guess what I'm looking for are the experiences students are having in their clinicals. I start mine in spring and would love to hear what people have to say about what they experienced, witnessed, sad, good, nice nurses or just any advice ect...

Thanks though

Tomorrows RN

Jennerizer, ASN, RN · Aug 16, 2003

I thought one of my patients was dead. I walked into his room one morning about 7:20 am to find him not responding to me calling his name & he had the sheet pulled up over his head & all tucked in around it. I thought maybe he died overnight & perhaps they were waiting for family to arrive. Turns out he just likes sleeping with a sheet over his head....lol.

On the flip side, I had a patient that was only 42 yrs old & dying from cancer. Thing is, she didn't know it & was hoping it was just gallstones (turned out to be a tumor on her liver). The doctor wasn't going to be there until after I left so it was hard knowing the bad news myself.....but watching her try to be so optimistic as she waited for the doctor to show up. Another tough time was taking care of a 29 yr old man that nearly drowned when he was 2 yrs old. He couldn't speak, had no real brain function, weighed maybe 80 lbs (if that) & could barely move. It was definitely a reminder that sometimes we don't know how lucky we are to be healthy.