dr.dorian

This is long. But I have not vented all semester and I need to vent in a bad way. Theory has been great, no problem there. My major source of stress from the beginning has been sim lab, competencies, or clinicals. We're done with sim, done with competencies, now we just have clinicals, and I have been eaten up with anxiety every week. Doesn't help that anxiety is a usual struggle for me, even when I'm not under this much stress. I realize this was only my second clinical ever, but I just feel awful for some reason. At my school we have until noon the day after clinical to submit an 'EHR' type thing the faculty created. I sat down at my computer this afternoon to start working on it and doom washed over me. I realized I had absolutely no information on my pts I&O, gastro, urinary, or nutrition. I hope this is not as bad as it sounds. Some students were paired and some were not today to 'save time'. I was paired. My partner had to pass meds and then our pt had to go to HBO therapy and we did not see them again before we left. So, I did exactly as my instructor told me. My partner did a focused assessment, I changed pts gown (no time for a bath) while partner pulled meds w instructor, partner passed meds, and we immediately whisked pt off to HBO. So, cue me feeling useless for the next two hours. I offered to help but no one needed it. The only thing I did was help a random pt eat lunch. When I was documenting, my partner was making small talk constantly even though I constantly steered the talk back to our documentation... in the end it took me FOREVER to write my nurses note. Partner and I also tried to look at pts chart to get the info we were missing, but as soon as we got labs we needed, the doctor took the chart and we never got it back (That's right, no EHRs in this facility, only paper documentation. I actually like it even though I have no experience with an EHR. The RNs are not chained to computers hours a day and it seems nice. But what do I know? Literally nothing). The thing is, I am fairly confident that my instructor will understand what happened. She has been very reasonable so far. I just feel like this makes me look bad and I feel very uncomfortable when anything goes wrong in clinical due to the pass/fail nature of the course. I really could have looked at the chart sooner, but didn't. However, I did not even realize my partner did not ask pt about any of those things until much later while we were writing our (rather, my partner's) assessment findings. Also, I'm kind of irritated that both of our clinicals so far have been cut short. We have only been there about 3 hours each time and while that's kind of great, it's also not great because we simply do not have time to do everything we need to do. If we had the full 6 hours we're supposed to have all of the issues I've had both weeks would have been a nonissue. First semester is over in 3 weeks and I have never been so excited to have the entire summer to just work and relax.