End of Second Semester!!!

Hey all,

Sorry it has been so long since I have written about my semester. Things have gotten a little crazy around the office with mailings and catching up on inquiries. Anyway, this has definitely been a tough semester! Acute care is a lot of work and I really enjoy psych. Throughout the semester, we have been taking the material we learned in Professional Nursing and adding on to it during acute care. It is amazing to see just how much information I remember from last semester in this short amount of time. The goal is to later take the information I learn from this semester and apply it to complex care next semester.

Things have also been really busy with school. Along with the usual exams, quizzes, and clinical paperwork, we were assigned two very heavy papers in both acute care and psych. The acute care paper is basically a comprehensive overview of a patient we encountered while at our clinical placements. It discusses everything, including a physical assessment, functional health patterns, medications, an entire nursing care plan, a research article on the topic, and many more sections. It has been stressful to complete, but now that I am just about finished, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment with my nearly 35 page paper.

For the psych paper, we needed to choose a book from a list of choices on various mental health disorders. The book that i chose was Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp. This tells the story of the author's struggle with alcoholism. If you are interested in the topic or are looking for a good read, this is the book for you. The author keeps your attention by discussing her dependence on alcohol as if it were literally a love story and alcohol was her best friend. The paper discusses a review of the book, the pathophysiology of alcoholism, indications of the disease from within the book, and a nursing care plan that could be used to treat the patient.

Clinical has also been extremely interesting. Although I went into psych clinical with no interest in becoming a psych nurse, I have to admit that I really have enjoyed this semester. My clinical instructor is wonderful and really making the stigma of a psych floor dissipate and make us more comfortable on the floor. I have become much better at identifying specific mental health disorders without even referring to a chart. It is interesting to watch the dynamics of the floor depending on the different patients and personalities that are present on an individual day.

Acute care clinical has been a lot of work as well. I have really enjoyed my interactions with the patients on the floor. I believe that even within a short 2 days/week, I have made a difference in the lives of these patients. I have also loved working with the nurses on the floor. Every one of them are so helpful and more than willing to teach us students specific techniques and procedures. They understand that we are learning and give us every opportunity to practice our skills throughout our day. I believe that I have become proficient at patient assessment, especially neuro since it is a neuro floor.

I am extremely excited for this summer, since we will be taking both pediatrics and maternity. Since I hope to eventually become a pediatric NP, I believe that this summer will be extremely helpful for me to accomplish my goals. We are also receiving information regarding the fall semester. Then, we will be taking complex care, community health nursing, and advanced pathophysiology. At that time we will also have a clinical rotation for community health and a preceptorship for complex care. Within the preceptorship, we will be following a nurse throughout his/her day and become a more independent nurse. This will be extremely beneficial because rather than being assigned to only 1 or 2 patients, we will be doing whatever the nurse would do on a daily shift.

That was quite a lot for now! I'll be sure to keep you all posted with the end of the semester and beginning of summer! Ta ta for now!

- Katie