soapbrain

I would also look for information on how the mania aspect of bipolar disorder can affect ADLs, as I imagine people in a full-blown manic state would not be able to slow down enough to accomplish certain ADLs.

I haven't taken the NCLEX yet (going into senior year of nursing school) but I think you might want to hold off on starting the review books for a little while. NCLEX style questions take some getting used to and it's really good to practice them, but I don't think it would be helpful to do practice questions in content you haven't covered yet. There will probably be NCLEX style review questions at the end of the chapters in your textbook-- these are a great resource as they are specific to whatever you're studying. And as you progress, if you can do questions from a book that are broken up by subject matter that would be really good. But yeah, I think it would be wise to prioritize learning the content right off the bat and ease into the NCLEX questions as you know more about patho, pharm, and nursing management. I say this because I tried to take practice NCLEX tests and things like that before I took Med-Surg and it just confused me

Hi there. I am also a nursing student, just finished my psych rotation... In answer to your question, no, my clinical experience was not much like a working nurse's day (but I have no idea how this would operate at other facilities/schools). We did not pass meds and didn't really work too terribly closely with the RNs on the floor. But I don't think it matters that much, really, because (in my opinion) the most useful thing for you to do while you're there is talk to patients and try to pick up therapeutic communication skills. I think one of the best things you can do to enhance your learning experience is sit in on group therapy sessions, because it allows you to evaluate the therapists' use of therapeutic communication (which you can then model) or observe that particular therapist's LACK of therapeutic communication so that you know what not to do. Something else I found useful was going to the team meetings with the psychiatrist, therapist(s) and nurse(s) where they discuss each patient's case. It allows you to see how they arrived at diagnostic decisions, how the patient's insurance affects the care they can receive, why specific treatment modalities are being used, etc. Good luck with your rotation! I hope you enjoy it, I definitely did :)

I am in nursing school, and my textbooks (which are all published in the last two years) say that the worst place to give an IM injection is the posterior aspect of the glute because of the possibility of hitting the sciatic nerve. The best place with the least nerve involvement, they say, is the ventrogluteal site. They say the problem with the deltoid is that it's so underdeveloped in most people that it won't hold much medication.