I've been asked to start the WILTW thread, and I'm more than happy to!
This has been an exciting week for me, as it was the last week of my Med/Surg I rotation. I'm trying not to feel too relieved though, because finals are next week. That being said, I will still absolutely squeeze in time to catch up on GOT.
This week I learned:
That my clinical instructor is a big ole softy. I can't believe that I thought she was super scary when the rotation first started.
That having just one year left of nursing school doesn't feel like enough time. Don't get me wrong, I feel like I've learned a ton in the one year of school I've had (and I'm more than ready to graduate so that I can get my social life back), but when I think of just how much I still don't know, I get a little worried.
That I wish I could take some patients home with me. Throughout clinical, I had nice patients, but none that really lingered in my thoughts when I went home for the day. But last week I had a patient who had already been through so much. His whole family had already been through so much. Sometimes it's hard to know just what to say, and I hope I was more helpful than I felt I was.
That I'm probably going to have a lifetime of telling family members, I'm not a doctor. You really need to talk to your doctor about that. I will probably NEVER be able to diagnose you.â€
I've also learned that said family members, when you actually do give them advice (such as dietary advice), will say Oh, you're just regurgitating what you've learned in school,†and will continue to eat everything under the sun while wondering why their blood pressure isn't controlled. Why yes, I am telling you what I've learned in school, but apparently you'd rather hear that steak for every meal paired with a margarita is the best possible chance for survival.
That being said, I do follow the steak and margarita diet. But hey, I'm working on it.
That the best way to get a resident to like you is to empathize. Let them vent. Losing my independence is something I can hardly fathom, and I'm sure I wouldn't handle it with grace. (Like, really I'm very certain that I'll be the LOL trying to escape everyday and falling out of my wheel chair in an attempt to lunge out the door). It's ok to let residents feel angry about it. It's ok let them know that, yes, it does suck, and that you'll be right around the corner when they're ready for help.
But it's not ok if they scratch you. Or bite you. Oh swear at you. We still need some limits.
That I will never ever forget to do an oral assessment on my patients. This is the second time I've shined a penlight in there and found a massive case of oral thrush.
On that note, I'm also very glad I'm not a dentist or dental hygienist. I'll wipe all the butts in the world, but don't bring that mouth any closer to me.
But what's grosser than the grossest mouth? Maggots. I was not pleased to learn that maggots are still being used for wound debridement. That...is my limit.
I've learned that life sucks & it's only getting worse. My husband hasn't started his new job yet & I don't know how we are going to pay bills. Our son's birthday is next month & we don't have the money to do or buy anything for him & we feel like crap. I hope things get better soon!
I am also in my final week of nursing school. I am spending this week doing a Kaplan NCLEX review. So I am learning lots!
Thanks! I have Kaplan review next week and ATI Live this week. My brain aches from all the questions and tidbits of info, although it is helpful. These are going to be a long, painful 2 weeks.
More learning:
A characteristic difference that distinguishes a fat embolus from a blood embolus is the petechial rash.
I usually hate the questions about a pt with crutches, a walker, or cane, but today it finally clicked.
Although recent studies disprove this, NCLEX still has it: diverticulitis pts should avoid foods with seeds (e.g. strawberries, tomatos) because it can cause inflammation by being lodged in the diverticula.
Pts with latex allergies also display allergies to the following: avocados, kiwis, and bananas.
In dumping syndrome, lie pts supine or on their left side after eating.
Although recent studies disprove this, NCLEX still has it: diverticulitis pts should avoid foods with seeds (e.g. strawberries, tomatos) because it can cause inflammation by being lodged in the diverticula.
I discovered that avoiding seeds wasn't EBP in my final semester of nursing school but I've never been able to convince a single person of it.
I've learned that life sucks & it's only getting worse. My husband hasn't started his new job yet & I don't know how we are going to pay bills. Our son's birthday is next month & we don't have the money to do or buy anything for him & we feel like crap. I hope things get better soon!
Specializes in M/S, LTC, Corrections, PDN & drug rehab.
Hugs Chaos. [emoji173]ï¸
How old is da bebe?
He is going to be 2 next month.
Thank you everyone for your hugs & well wishes. My husband got laid off in March & applied to the prison in town & it is taking forever for the paperwork to go through. I don't know what we are going to do. It's already May & bills are piling up.
I want to work & help but at this point with the stress of all of this & how long I have been out of work I know there is no way I could get or keep a job.
Thank you everyone for your hugs & well wishes. My husband got laid off in March & applied to the prison in town & it is taking forever for the paperwork to go through. I don't know what we are going to do. It's already May & bills are piling up.
I want to work & help but at this point with the stress of all of this & how long I have been out of work I know there is no way I could get or keep a job.
Same. I grew up in a ridiculously strict environment where people told me something was wrong with me if I wanted to do anything other than become a wife and mom. Saying some of these recent posts irks me doesn't even begin to touch it.
I had a bunch of those in my high school, which is the biggest tragedy I know of in my personal life. I went to a very high achievement private school from K-12. My best friend left as a D student and instantly had a 4.0 in the local public high schools, to give you an idea. The ******* VALEDICTORIAN in my graduating class, who is a brilliant woman, decided to go off, be a missionary in some rural mountain town, and has already popped out six or so babies. One of my best friends who was salutatorian in her class has gone off with her husband (who is, by the way, the first and only person she's ever even kissed) in the middle of backwoods West Virginia to take a crappy salary as a church choir director at the same church where he is the music director. They are two of the many, many reasons I created a new Facebook with a different last name so I don't even have any of those people come across the "People You May Know" list. The tragedy of those wasted minds is right up there with mass shootings in my book. Maybe I'm just too judgmental, but that's how I feel.
That, and three of my high school classmates have already graduated med school and finished their residencies, and here I am twiddling my thumbs making $20 something an hour and I can't stand to see them being more successful than me either because I'm petty like that.
That giving my cat subQ fluids is scarier than starting any human IV. I don't like to hurt my kitteh...
Right there with you. I gave my cat SQ Lasix for three days once when they were doing a differential of cardiogenic pleural effusions vs. cancer-associated pleural effusions. I felt like a total monster giving him those injections, not to mention I gave him the worst constipation of his life in the process.
Strangely enough, I like reading material that interests me (hard sciences, yeah!!) and prefer quiz and test-heavy classes to writing intensive ones. This BSN program and all of the theory/cultural awareness/leadership stuff just bores me to tears.
Right there with you, too. I can't do stuff unless it's hard. So glad I got my BSN the first time around, so I at least had med/surg, psych, L&D classes, etc. along with the boring leadership/management, community, etc. classes. I would have flunked out if I had to do all of the fluff stuff by itself.
Never heard the word hetastarch until today and apparantly NCLEX likes to ask questions about it.
I had one surgeon who liked to use it at my first job. He insisted all boluses be hespan instead of normal saline for hypotension because normal saline was more likely to cause extra third spacing at the surgical site while the hespan would stay in the veins like it was supposed to. I've never seen or heard of it again any time since.
It's usually very difficult to make me mad, but I almost flipped my crap on work crush the other day when I attempted (unsuccessfully) to wean a patient off of nonrebreather and back on to high flow nasal cannula since she kept clawing at her nonrebreather mask. He goes, "OK, respiratory, what are you doing?"
REALLY?! I learned that some nurses, even freaking critical care nurses, think that O2 delivery is the responsibility of respiratory therapists only. He wants to be a travel nurse and I can't wait for him to go - so he can be totally lost realizing ALL of the equipment in a critically ill patient's room is within the scope of a nurse to handle. I hope he gets his first assignment at a hospital that really understaffs respiratory therapy and realizes how out of his depth he's going to be because he's let respiratory therapy manage every aspect of a patient's breathing when he had all these golden opportunities to learn how to work the BiPAP and know more about vent modes himself, but he let those opportunities pass him right by because it "isn't his job." Obviously. /rant.
calivianya, that sounds very similar to my high school. Granted, I don't see anything wrong with becoming a missionary and having several kids if that's what the person really wants to do, but there were several kids there who believed that's what they were supposed to do, even if it's not what they necessarily wanted for their lives.
Farawyn
12,646 Posts
Hugs Chaos. [emoji173]ï¸
How old is da bebe?