Had a Great Experience Today

Tuesday and Wednesday are our clinical days. I'm still very stressed at what happened last week, but decided that just going about my business of learning and being a student nurse was what I was going to do...

We choose our own patients. So Monday came, and I went to the hospital, and selected an isolation patient who is very, very sick. I'm not going to get into his dx's because of HIPPA, but he had multiple issues, all of which could be fatal unto themselves. But he presented a great opportunity to learn, and he was nice, so I took him.

Developed great rapport with him yesterday, and did some rote stuff like change linens and whatnot. All his meds were IV, so I couldn't admin them, but sat in iso and chatted with him a lot; made him feel more comfortable, and accepted. I felt great. More importantly, *he* felt great, too...sick as all heck, but great. I left as scheduled, with him still waiting to get taken to xray.

Today, I find out that xray came to him. He's too sick to bring out into general population, so they brought it to him. I thought that was pretty neat. Then, later, after giving some meds through his NG tube (crushed and mixed with water), the Dr. comes in. Except it wasn't his regular Dr., it was a Dr pushing a machine. I was surprised, and asked what was going on...and found out my patient was getting a PICC line. After the regular RN suctioned his trache, I stayed in the room to 'assist' the Dr with the PICC. I say 'assist' because I was doing absolutely nothing other than watching...and what a time it was. The only thing I did was keep my patient calm(er) until the morphine took effect, and helped the Dr. maintain a sterile field and hold the lido bottle so he could fill it.

After all that, all I did was observe. The Dr was fantastic...not only explained to the pt what was going to happen, but brought me over to the machine and let me watch, and identify veins and arteries and see the magnetic thingy pop green targets. I was fascinated...and my patient was in hysterics. He said he'd never had a procedure that was so fascinating to the nurse, student or not...and never had a nurse cheer the Dr for hitting the target. LOL, we were all in there laughing, and my instructor came in to see what the hoopla was about. She just shook her head...

I am sort of sad, because my patient is very, very sick...but also really glad that I got to see this procedure. What a fascinating thing...and how cool it was to see. And how generous of both my patient and the Dr were to let me stay in there and learn from them both.

Wayyyy too good of a day. I just wanted to share how fun it was today. Now, time to go finish a reasearch paper and study for a pharm exam tomorrow morning...the beat does, of course, go on...

Best-

Lovin Learning