Loving my next clinical placement - spinal cord injury and wound care

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happy! i just found out my winter clinical placement is on a spinal cord injury / wound care floor. woot woot! im soo excited - its for 195 hours in total from Jan. to April.

I can't wait!

Has anyone ever done a clincial placement on this type of floor...what should I expect to be doing while im in placement and what should I spend time on reviewing over the holidays (nursing books, etc). Any tips would be great!

if anyone knows any good websites that would be helpful to me I would greatly appreciate it too...

Thanks!

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Specializes in Cardiac Care.

Moved to Nursing Student forum...

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I haven't done a clinical placement on any floor, but I wanted to wish you luck! You sound so excited! :D It definitely sounds interesting. I'm sure you'll learn a lot next semester! :)

Tiffany

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

Very cool! My favorite clinical was on a SCI unit. A year or so back Nursing Made Incredibly Easy did a really nice overview on spinal cord injuries. If you have time you could always do some NCLEX neuro questions etc. Like with anything there are a few tweeks that are important to know like autonomic dysreflexia and one thing that I found facinating is that their internal temperature regulation can be out of whack causing fevers. The other thing that I thought was interesting is throw the "turn every 2 hours" rule right out the window, in these patients ideally there should be some position shift q 20 minutes. Hopefully others will write in with pointers for you. I think Daytonite did some work on this floor also and can probably offer a ton of advice. Enjoy!

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Specializes in Peri-op/Sub-Acute ANP.

Congratulations!

I have never worked on the floor with such patients, but I have worked in the OR with wound care patients who have mobility restrictions. From this experience, I would have the following two pieces of advice for you.

Make sure you know body mechanics and how to prevent yourself from a back injury. Depending on their level of mobility, you may be doing a lot of work for them, so know how to protect your back!

Secondly, make sure that you carry some type of mint or something (I like sugar-free menthyl tabs, but anything "strong" smelling will do). Sometimes the wounds you are dealing with can have very strong odors, and after a while it can get to you. If you have a strong cough drop or something it can really help you get over the smell.

Good luck to you, with your enthusiasm you are going to be great!

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