newnurse66

I work on a unit that deals with a lot of patients that have lung cancer and are smokers. But what I have found is that when I go and meet that patient and get to know them, the last thing on my mind is that they were a smoker, or did it to themselves. It is probably easier to imagine judging someone based on diagnosis and bad habits, but once you are taking care of the person and finding out about their life and loved ones you will probably be able to look beyond that.

Ask questions about what a typical day is like for someone in that position. How they incorporate evidence based research into their practice? Research the latest issues with OR nursing and you could ask questions like what is their hospital doing to prevent wrong site errors, are they proactive about preventing errors? Things that show that you have thought through the nursing role in the OR should be good. Hope that helps.

I have never come in early to read their history, management would not approve that. But after I received report, I would go and read the first note written after admission, as I found this to have the most complete history including the previous medications taken at home, which helped during med pass when patients wanted to know which medication was for what, and I could explain "oh you took this at home called "ex" and this is similar just a different brand that the hospital uses", patients found this extremely helpful . . .the next note I read was the last note by the MD, this helped determine what new things were going on or if the patient was going to be discharged, helped plan my day much better. I found that if I didn't have all this information, I would have a hard time answering the pt's questions. This also helped in my time management, because the morning med pass would take the longest and it was nice to answer their questions at the same time, instead of trying to come back and looking like I didn't know their history or what was currently going on with them.

I am a loner as well and didn't really want to be part of a huge study group. So what I used to do was study on my own and then meet up with one or two other people, and study a couple of days before tests. Then we could answer each others questions. Especially if there was a concept one of us wasn't clear about, then the other person would explain and it really helped. It also made it easier to remember even if you were the one explaining. Hope that helps.

Good Luck!!!