Week 10!!!

Hello everyone,

So I did it!!! I made it through the past 2 stressful weeks!!! We had an overwhelming 5 assignments due this week!!! It all started out with our second pharmacology exam on Monday. I stayed in most of the weekend in order to study since I knew that there was a ton of information that was going to be piled onto this exam. I went through each chapter, or drug classification, and broke down the individual medications to reflect their effects on the body. Naming the drugs based on the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system allowed me to understand their effects on the major organs. Then, I was able to take each specific medication and learn the clinical uses and side effects based on their effects on the body. I hoped that this would be enough for me to pass the exam. I even thought of several mnemonics in order to help remember each drug. After going over the exam once, I felt really confident. Most of the material that I studied was the information placed on the exam. I felt like I finally could say that I understand how to study for pharmacology exams.

Next up was a lab quiz and case study due in lab on Tuesday. The case study was to be on a fake patient and we were to come up with the appropriate nursing diagnoses as well as expected outcomes, interventions, and rationales for 2 diagnoses. This was not too difficult since we have some practice writing them from clinical. The quiz was a little challenging. There was some controversy after the quiz when we all discussed some of the questions amongst eachother. Everybody thought they had a reason as to why they thought they had gotten certain answers right. Based on this, I'm not exactly sure how I did on this. We will see next week!

Wednesday, all that was due was our full subjective history and physical assessment paper in health assessment. I did this one on my boyfriend, who didn't understand why I had to ask so many questions haha... This was a lot of work during this already busy week. However, by managing my time, I was able to get it all done.

Finally, our very last assignment was due in clinical today. It was a functional health patterns paper on a previous patient we were assigned to. This paper was helpful because it allowed us to complete the entire document and ask the appropriate questions to get feedback from the patient. This was mainly based on the patient's subjective information provided in quotations throughout the paper.

Clinical was a very hectic day for me as well as the other girls. The morning was chaotic because they were short staffed with both nurses and CNAs. I, along with another friend, were asked if we could obtain the morning vital signs for a number of patients on the floor. This was stressful because we got a late start on working with our own patients. My patient was a very nice man being treated for severe abdominal pain. By the end of the day, I was so busy helping him that I was only able to look at his bedside chart for the last 15 minutes! However, I was able to administer my first oral medications with the help of the nurse and my clinical instructor. I was nervous that I was going to make a mistake, but it ended up being a lot easier than I anticipated. It was exciting to feel like a crucial element to patient care and I look forward to doing this again!

That's all for now. Some of the other GMs and myself are getting together tonight for some bonding time! I'll let you know how that goes next week!!!

- Katie : )