Clinicals

I started my adult health rotation last week. I'll spend 5 weeks on a cardiovascular surgery floor, then 5 weeks on a short stay medical floor. Here's a quick rundown on what my weeks are going to look like from now until Christmas:

Mon: Lecture noon-8pm

Tues: Lecture 8am-3pm, go to clinical unit and copy patient information, write up a report on patient including primary diagnosis with pathophysiology, up to 6 comorbid diagnoses, explain their pathophysiology and effect on primary diagnosis, past medical history, drug cards for medications (up to 12), and a priority nursing diagnosis.

Wed: Clinical 7am-4pm, write up a report that includes assessment of patient, and nursing care plan with daignoses, interventions, expected outcomes, and method of evaluation.

Thurs: Clinical 7am-4pm, implement the care plan, write up an evaluation of whether it worked.

Fri: Simulation or Community Health (alternating Fridays). For simulation days, write SBAR report, critique partner's SBAR, blog, and comment on blog.

That's the summary for this class alone. I guess that's what happens when you take a single class worth 8 credits.

Other than the crazy workload, I think I'll really enjoy this clinical rotation. My instructor is great, gets really involved while we're on the floor. And the patient population is mostly interesting. I say mostly because I'm interested in cardiac surgery patients, but not vascular surgery patients. Vascular surgery is a lot of, "Oh, you had uncontrolled diabetes for your entire life, we're going to cut your gangrenous leg off now." I'm hoping to be assigned a cardiac patient for this week.

Also, our nurse manager had breakfast there for us on the first day. How cool is that?

I'll write more about clinicals when I start to get interesting stories to tell.