Pointers for Med-Surg

[kkirby00]

Hey, guys! I just started Med. Surg. this semester. We only have one main Med-Surg class other than our preceptorship (I'm in an ADN program). Any words of wisdom. I have heard some horror stories so any help would be much appreciated!:wink2:

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

click on the link and the bottom of this post, the critical thinking flow sheet for nursing students, and print it out. use this to help you learn all the elements you need to know about each medical disease/condition you will be studying in your course. surgery is a treatment by physicians for a medical condition.

[melisgood]

My main advice would be to go slow to avoid mistakes and once you know what your instructor requires out of your rotation (v/s Q4h, pass meds, am care, nursing documentation, etc) make a schedule to follow and leave room to fill in other tasks that come up and check it off as you go to stay on track. I use a three ring binder and put this schedule in the front and have tabs with all my patients info (Kardex, MAR and daily journal we have to fill out for class). I also bring my phone/pda so I have accesss to a medical dictionary, drug handbook, nursing Dx, and lab program. Also, when I first enter a patient's room, I try to clean it up a little and get rid of trash and unnecessary items so if I have to do a procedure (insert foley, etc) I have the space for it. In otherwords, organization is key! That's my 2 cents!

[melisgood]

My advice is to get organized and use a pda if allowed (my phone/pda has a medical dictionary, nursing Dx, drug, and lab program I purchased from skyscape.com) and a three ring binder. I also figure out what is required of me at each clinical location (v/s Q4h, nursing documentation, med administration, etc) and I make a chart with the time of day on the left hand side and list what I have to do at what time. I have columns for each of my patients where I can write any additional tasks or notes to myself as I go and check it off. Also, when you first go into the patient's room, clean up any unnecessary items and make the patient accessible and any items you may need later (emisis basin, liquid container to drain foley/jp drain). I also have learned to come into the patient's room as early as I can with clean sheets and a new gown if the CNA won't be doing that for me and I leave it on a chair or in the closet close by so if the patient gets up to use the BR or gets up with PT, you can quickly change the sheets. Basically, organization is key! Just learn to prioritize also, if your patient requests a refill on water and it's not an emergency and you need to finish something else (like passing meds or documentation), write yourself a note on your schedule to bring water to that patient and let your patient know you will be back in a little bit. Hope that helps.

[amyb2684]

The thing that I tell fellow students who ask me how I do so well on tests (during med-surg last semester), I always learn the patho to whatever it is we are studying and the rest just comes with it. Of course, it is easy to over-rationalize sometimes and look at things the wrong way and think it increases BP instead of decreasing BP, but I strongly believe that if you learn the patho it is easier than trying to learn just the facts. Our tests were/are scenerio based questions (which I assume most everybody else's are too), they focus a lot on interventions/implementations, but like I already said patho really was the key to knowing what to do there.

[melisgood]

I just realized you probably meant med-surg theory not clinical....oops! Our class teaches med-surg during each semester. =)