Do you have a minute?

In my last couple weeks of nursing school I had my clinicals on-campus. Due to insufficient funding and not enough instructors we had to split up our clinical experience between the hospital (VA for me) and our "clinical simulations". Now if I'm being honest I went into the clinical simulation with a horrible attitude...which I'm sure surprises you! I knew that nothing could compare to the hands-on experience that you get with a "real" patient. But if I'm being honest, which I am because I'm a truth-teller; I'd tell you that our instructors made the best out of the worst situation.

One of the greatest things about this clinical simulation was our "passing meds" simulation. Of course we were given the worst case scenario...my patient had meds that had drug-drug interactions with every med she was on, there were wrong doses, routes, times, etc. It really made you think about the reality of passing and administering medications...peoples' lives are in our hands...and if we don't take the time to correctly and accurately look at what we're doing we could kill someone. For me that's the scariest part of nursing...give me blood, vomit, poop, urine, pressure ulcers the size of my fist but there's something about administering meds that's extremely intimidating.

At the VA all of us couldn't help but notice just how much time all the nurses spent at the med carts...now we know...they're taking a minute to block out the distractions and put their patients best interest at hand. My patients' life and well-being is in my hands and if I just take an extra moment to look through and "read the fine print" I could have just spent the best 60 seconds of my life.

So the next time your pain meds are a couple minutes late, or your nurse seems a little frazzled because she's running behind...look them in the eyes and thank them..because you'll never know if they just caught a med error and saved your life!

So even though I would have rather spent my last couple weeks as a level 1 nursing student at the VA working with real scenarios...I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to practice administering medications. I'm thankful that my instructors took the time to set up a situation that really made me use my critical thinking. I'm thankful that I've been pushed past my limits and past the line that I had drawn in the sand; that line that said, "this is the stupidest thing ever...ugh...why do good things always get cut short for me, why do I have to do this stupid fake simulation". Because if it wasn't for this simulation I might have never thought twice about administering 1,000 mEq of K-Dur crushed along with 500 mcg of Digoxin and 80 mg of Lisinopril...