Posts (page 2)

I don't have a lot of time to write this entry, but I just wanted to say that I got to observe in the Cardiac Cath Lab today and I really liked it! Basically, a catheter is inserted into the femoral artery in the groin. From there it is threaded up to the heart where contrast dye is released so that the coronary blood vessels are visible. It is so cool. This is about what it looks like:

I alternated between standing in the room where the procedure was going on, and the room beyond the glass where the recording nurse sits. That person keeps an eye on the heart monitor and also records the procedure log. Here is what the image looks like:

So you can't really see the *heart* but you can see all the vessels surrounding it and pulsating. I can't explain to you how interesting this was to me. I'm just so jazzed up by this experience. I got to see 3 procedures done in the 4 hours I was there. I was lucky, it was a busy day.

Anyhow, got to get ready to take the train down to Alex's. He's picking me up on the bike. Woohoo!

I got a call today from the HR Director at the hospital. Apparently my paperwork came back a-ok with no 'discrepancies', which is what they call it when a date is off by a couple months for whatever reason, things like that. Nancy was excited that we didn't have to deal with that. The only thing is for some reason my high school records were going to take awhile to come back (come on! I didn't graduate that long ago!) so the background check agency wanted me to fax them my diploma. Fortunately I actually know where it is, and it's not buried in storage. I faxed it today but when I spoke to Nancy she said to bring her a copy when I come in so we don't have to wait.

I have to attend an orientation within 90 days of starting. JCAHO fines the hospital $2,500 for each day an employee works past 90 days without attending. Damn! The next one is April 16-17, which is M-T and I have clinicals those days. She said I could attend the one at the end of May since I will be out of school by then. I do have to go to an ethics class within 30 days. That is also on the 17th and starts at 1pm, I believe. So I have to ask my clinical instructor if I can leave at 12 that day. Hopefully that will be okay, she knows I've been hired for this job and she wrote me a really nice recommendation for it.

So! I have an appointment tomorrow at 9am with Nancy to finalize everything so hopefully I can start next week! 

Yay! I got the Nurse Extern Job!

Boo: It pays less than I thought. A couple other hospitals are paying $15/hr. This job will pay me $10/hr for part-time, $12/hr if I am per diem. Basically if I'm per diem, I can say, "Nah, don't feel like working", and in turn they can say, "Nah, we don't need you to work today." The woman in HR said that I will still be scheduled for my two days, but if they are not busy, per diems are the firs to be sent home. I will be doing per diem. I'll take the chance for 20% more on my check.

Yay! I will be doing CNA duties, along with skills I am learning in school. They also may have me helping out the charge nurse as a unit clerk, and I was told I could take the Beginning EKG Interpretation class and then take my test to be a monitor tech as well.

The past two days I have been doing my rotation as Client Care Manager at clinicals. This means I've had to get to the hospital at 6:30 am (an hour early). And right after the time change too! Super. Basically, I was not assigned patients. Instead I helped assign patients to my classmates and then checked in with them throughout the day to get updates on their patients and help them develop ideas for their careplans and documentation. There's a bit more to it than that, but you get the gist. Now instead of doing the paperwork I normally do each week on one of my patients, I have to write a short paper on my experience. You know I'm doing that shit Sunday night.

Anywhos, I am BEAT. Sunday night I couldn't get to sleep until after midnight, and then I woke up at 2am with poopy cramps. My alarm went off at 5am. I need to go sleepy nie nies now.  

This morning I went to Cardiac Rehab for 2 hours (thank GOD there is no minimum time requirement this term). It was actually pretty interesting. Basically, after patients have heart surgery, bypass, stents, etc, they are referred to CR for about 3 months. They work out on treadmills and stuff while they are hooked up to heart monitors. After that they can join the maintenance program, which is just like joining a gym. Those old people were in better shape than I am, I'm sure!

ALSO I finally got an email back from Patty asking me to call her to set up an interview! I did and she said that either she or the clinical coordinator will call me back this afternoon with a time. She said that I come highly recommended by both Candace and Debbie so she doesn't think it will be a problem to get me in. She also said that the shift would be 7a-7p so I said I would like to work 2 days a week then. Fingers still crossed, but YAAAAAAAAAY! This is a HUGE weight off my shoulders.

Still slightly stressing that I have a paper due Monday (won't take long to do though) and then a test on the 21st which I should have been studying for but haven't. Ah well.

This is Spring Break, I should not be so stressed.

First of all, I have no job. Now, as it's Spring Break, it's not a bad week to be unemployed, but I'd like to know that next week I will have a job again. I called HR last Friday and asked that they forward my resume and application along to the PCU Director, Patty. Today my dad asked if I was going to call the hospital and follow up. Call WHO, exactly? HR again? What is the sense in that? Well, as it happens I still have my e-tenet email access, so I emailed Patty directly to ask if she got my application and if not to let me know and I can forward my resume to her, or call HR again if she'd like. So, fingers crossed. I'd really like to get moving on this.

Next, I have a paper due on Monday for my 'community experience'. Basically, the school wants us to get a chance to see different nursing roles outside of acute care. Last semester I went to the Birthing Center at Good Sam (which was nice, because I was already working with the DON of that unit). Now technically, this isn't what the assignment called for, but my clinical instructor kicked ass and she knew that's where my interest was so she let me do it anyway.

Friday I called Cardiac Rehab at JFK (because I know that's one of the approved sites) to see if I could observe there. I left a message for whoever, and then called back yesterday and got someone on the gym floor. They said I had to speak to Sue in education, so I called her, and she said that there was a Health Fair going on soon and I could do blood pressures and get an "actual community experience". Well...I hate doing blood pressures. I've gotten better at it, but anyway. The other thing is that I am a huge procrastinator and HELLO my paper is due Monday. I did call the coordinator anyway, who has not returned my call as of yet. I called Sue back today and told her my deadline, to which she sighed and said, "Oh, you people! Leaving things till the last minute!" But whatever, she set me up to observe at Cardiac Rehab on Thursday. Ahhhh. So that's one thing down.

Spring Break was so much better in high school.

I got a 92% on my test today! Awoohoo! Much as I hate to admit it, I think it might have something to do with all those required practice modules we had to do before this test. We had to complete 50% of the term requirement or we weren't allowed into the test. This brings my average up to 87.3%, 2.7% away from an A. That would be so awesome; this class is worth 7 credits.

Midterm evals for clinicals are on Monday. I'm not really worried about that. My teacher already said that my paperwork is great. I'm not saying that she won't have any suggestions for improvement, and actually I hope she does. I am gaining a lot of skill and confidence in this rotation and any constructive criticism is only going to further my competence.

In other news, Alex wants me to go to the doctor because I took my temp yesterday and it was 100.1F which means that I've basically been running a fever for almost 2 weeks now and I am just exhausted, even when I get a good night's sleep. I don't disagree with him but I don't have insurance now so it's going to cost me money I'd rather not spend. He does have a reasonable doctor who is very non-insured friendly, but it's down by him. He wants me to call and make an appointment today, even if it's not until next week. I am not sure why I am resisting this as much as I am. I can't function when I am this tired all the time. My life is exhausting as it is without adding a sickness to it. I just hope it's not something nasty I picked up in clinicals. I wouldn't think so, I'm pretty good about washing my hands upon entering and leaving patients' rooms. This week I had the same patient Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday they put him on contact precautions because his lab results came back positive for C. Diff. My first thought was, "Crap, I wish I had taken his vitals first," because you can't take dynamaps in isolation rooms so I had to take manual BP, use a disposable thermometer, and wipe my steth down completely with alcohol after I was done. My second thought was, "Great. He wasn't on contact YESTERDAY when I was in his room all day." Honestly, I'm not that worried because the organism is in his poop and you know I wasn't touching any of that.

Well I suppose I ought to get back to work. I only have 4 days left here, including today. Which reminds me, I seriously need to update my resume tonight.

I am so freaking tired! I know, this is nothing new for me but I've actually been getting a good amount of sleep this week. Tuesday night I got 12+ hours, Wed I got...maybe 6 or so (which is less than I prefer) but then last night I got 8 so I don't know why I feel like my head is about to fall onto my keyboard.

Except perhaps that I've been sick for a week. I don't know if I've continued to run a fever because I haven't taken my temp since Tuesday AM when it was 101F. I'm just not giving my body enough chance to recharge, I suppose, and I won't in the near future either. I would love to go home tonight and just go right to bed but I have too much stuff to get done.

I have a test on Wednesday and we have to show proof that we've completed half of the course requirements in the HESI and MedsPub modules or else they don't even let you take the test. HESI I can deal with. They say, complete 8 modules. MedsPub says, "Complete 90 minutes in this section", which is stupid. Last night I signed on and then let the annoying voiced lady talk while I cleaned up the computer room (which is such a welcome improvement. It was a shithole.). When she finished one page, I'd click to the next, and in that way I got a lot of the required time out of the way. I still need to study for the actual test too.

This weekend is going to be busy.
Saturday:
8:30-11:30am Skills Lab Class (and check off on CVL flushing and dressing change which I have to study for tonight)
1:30pm-?? My grandmother's 80th birthday party
7:30pm-?? Monster truck show at the stadium (I'm excited! Alex got the tickets free from work and I've never been to one before so it should be fun!)

Sunday Alex has his motorcycle class from 7am-3pm I think, so I shall sleep, study, and go see my grammie somewhere in there since she is selling her condo and they close on Wednesday. :( Oh and I also have to do my paperwork for clinicals on Monday.

I just. need. to SLEEEEEEEEEP.

Seriously. I feel like I'm going to fall over.

I had a test this morning. Got a little better in the procrastination, but I still had some stuff to cover this morning. Anyway, I got an 82% but I should get credit added for one more question. The program tells you the questions you missed when you are finished, plus the correct answer.

The question doesn't really matter, but for the answer I put:
- Have patient ambulate as soon as possible
- Encourage coughing and deep breathing

The test program says:

WRONG
Correct answer:
- Have patient ambulate as soon as possible
- Encourage coughing and deep breathing

Hello! I called the proctor over and she told me to write down the question and my answer on my signature sheet before I turned it in. I talked to Laura and the same thing happened to her.

Exciting things in skills:
My brother let me start an IV on him on Sunday! I didn't actually hook him up to the IV line because I had used it in practice so it wasn't sterile. I did have sterile venipuncture needles so I just used those to practice hitting the vein. On the first try I missed. Since he said I wasn't hurting him, I started moving the needle around to try and get the vein. Still couldn't. That was my last needle of that type, so I had to use a butterfly needle next. With that one I hit it dead on and got a nice flash back! I was so excited! I feel good that I was able to do it that time, but now I know that IV starts might not be as easy as I thought.

In clinical on Monday I got to discontinue a Foley Catheter. Not much to it, but I think I did well and my teacher told me I did also. It's always exciting to get to do new skills!

Today I had my first test of this semester. It covered 16 or so chapters and I, like a jackass waited until last weekend to start studying. I had about 13 chapters covered last night when I went to bed at 1am. This morning I didn't even read the last chapters, I just went on to webct and read the notes and the powerpoints for those chapters.

I got an 86%

This does not mean I am going to do it this way again, though! Too stressfull!

My Nurse's Notes for today:

0800- sitting up in bed 35 degrees watching TV.  Resting comfortably, no resp distress noted. t 98.8 p 94 bp 160/72 rr 18 O2 sat = 96% on room air.  changed diaper, loose stool present.  noted redness and irritation on gluteal folds and scrotum.  reapplied condom catheter.  left pt w/ call bell in reach, bed rails up x2.

1000- changed diaper, loose stool present.  applied zinc ointment to reddened areas of gluteal folds and scrotum.  pt expressed pain when cleaning fecal matter from area.  condom catheter came off so a new one was applied.  catheter tubing secured to leg with paper tape.

And how was your day?   In all honesty it wasn't that bad.  This is the first time I've actually had to clean poo since I've been in nursing school and my luck was bound to run out eventually.  What was really a pain was having a patient who was on contact precautions because of MRSA (methicillin resistant staph infection) in a wound on his toe.  That means I had to wear a gown and glove for all patient contact.  Gets hot after awhile and you have to take it off when you leave the room and then put a new one on.  Ah well, another day, more knowledge put into my brain.

Also, I got a call from the HCA scholarship coordinator at my school who wants me to come in for an interview tomorrow, so wish me luck with that!  My biggest hurdle is that I'm requesting an out-of-county hospital, so I have to be approved by that district.