What goes around comes around

What a fabulous past couple of weeks I've had...and life decided I needed a little extra icing on top of my cake and gave me a nasty cold! :( Blah! So I sit here with my kleenex piling up, a sudafed on bored, and soup on the stove! Everyone in my clinical group had gotten this nasty cold and I thought that I'd be the one survivor, unfortunately, we all know the saying, "what goes around comes around" and well...here I am, blowing my brains out! However, I absolutely love my clinical location and my clinical instructor and all of my fellow students! This has been my favorite clinical experience so far! Our days are always jam-packed with skills, skills, and more skills! Our instructor works her tail of running back and forth between all the different rooms. (you see, we're required to have our instructor with us for essentially any of the skills that we do) 


So far I've been able to give lots of IV pushes which includes reconstituting some meds, IM injections (including a massive 3 mL in someones hip (OUCH!), hanging IV bags (woot), I D/C'd a Foley catheter, I got to do deep throat suctioning, PICC line dressing change, other wound dressing changes, and much more. 


We all had to finish 3 complete care plans (the 14 page paper that outlines your patient, their background, and your plan of care for them...you know...the part of nursing school that every student leaps, whoops, and hollers with excitement for...NOT!!!). And now that we've all finished three complete care plans we now get to go into our clinicals "blind". Meaning, we go in like we're actual nurses *gasps and leans forward to catch my breath*. We get report from the leaving nurse and just go take care of our patients. It's really awesome!


Clinical days are so much fun yet very challenging all at the same time! Before anyone goes in to do their skill there are the personal doubts and that voice in the back of your head that says, "you don't know what you're doing, you're not ready for this, there's no way that you're going to be able to be a real nurse" but somehow, with the strength and words of encouragement from fellow classmates, you somehow gather enough strength and you go into that room with your head held high and with the belief that you can do it! Then at the end of the day you share how you messed up on the little things, excelled in the skill you thought you'd totally bomb, and then you move on!


Somehow we're wrapping up our 5th week already, which means that I only have one more week on the general surgical floor and then I'm moving on to labor & delivery and mental health! That also means that we're almost half way through the semester!!!!! Holy smokes! How did I get here?! Time flies when you're having fun right!!! :)