2nd Semester!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello everyone,

So I made it through to see another semester!!! Sorry it has been so long since my last post... At the end of last semester, things got a little crazy with finals and finishing up work in the office before Christmas break. But I live to see another day and if I can do it, you can all do it too!!! My finals were mainly cumulative with multiple choice scantron questions. These are a lot like the questions that will be asked on the NCLEX exam. These were tough, but it was nice to have 1 semester under my belt. Christmas break was a much needed necessity! Although I didn't have much planned, it was nice to just do nothing for a change! However, by early January when everyone went back to work and I had 2 weeks by myself, I was ready for school to start up again!

So here I am... second semester consists of 2 classes, Acute Care and Psych. I also have 3 days of clinical. My clinical sites are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for psych 1 day/week and Mass General Hospital for Acute Care 2 days/week. The classes are a lot more intense than last semester. The professors expect a lot from us and rely on us to remember all that we learned last semester so that we can build on it. I condensed my classes to 1 day/week with a night class so that I could get my hours in to work in the graduate admissions office.

In Acute care, we began learning about the basics of the class, cancer management, and respiratory disorders. Although we touched upon these issues last semester, a lot more of the focus is on nursing diagnoses of particular problems that could happen as well as interventions to assist in patient care. In psych, we began by also learning the basics, including the history of psych nursing, the admission process, and axises by which mental illness are diagnosed. I have 2 quizzes today so we'll see how that goes. Luckily, this is the only day that the 2 courses conflict with an assignment or quiz/exam.

I was nervous to start back up with clinical since it had been over a month since I had been in a hospital setting. The floor that we're assigned to at MGH is a neurosurgery floor, mainly treating strokes, brain cancer, and trauma/spinal cord injury. However, I realized that I remembered a lot more than than I thought I would. We're trained well to be ready for most situations that occur with nursing care. The nurses are so helpful and since MGH is a teaching hospital, they really want you to understand the material. I even had one nurse quiz me on the action of a certain med! Psych is also very interesting. We are not allowed in the patients' rooms for routine nursing care or give the patients meds, as in acute care clinical. This clinical is more focused on therapeutic communication and understanding different mental illnesses. This will definitely help me in the hospital setting!

Well, that's all for now! I'll check back in next week!

- Katie : )