On my own

[aerorunner80, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN]

I was wondering if anyone has any advice for me? I have only two days left with my preceptor, Friday and Saturday, and will be on my own for the first time on Sunday and Monday.

I'm scared out of my mind!

I make such silly mistakes. One most recent was while I was changing fluids on an art line. It's the responsibility of day shift to change out any clear fluids that are running and nights changes out TPN and IL.

So here I was changing my fluids and had all my lines primed up to the point of attaching my transducer and I got stuck. I was holding the transducer in one hand and my primed lines in the other and couldn't figure out why the two wouldn't go together. Come to find out I had the 3-way stopcock that attaches to the transducer in my one hand. No wonder they wouldn't go together!!! The stopcock goes to the line that goes to the baby!:lol2: I couldn't believe I did that!

Then I had to ask someone about zeroing out the art line after changing the fluids. I knew I had to hook up a syringe to the free port on the stopcock but couldn't remember, for the life of me, which way to turn the stopcock to zero it out. I asked my pod mate and she told me to turn it off to baby.

Well as soon as she said that I felt like a do-do bird! I KNEW that! If I turned it any other way, off to the fluids for example, the baby would bleed and infection could be introduced!:smackingf