My First Clinical

Here I am, alarm going off at 5:30 AM on a Wednesday morning. I reluctantly got out of bed on only two and half hours of sleep. Thoughts from anxiety were already buzzing through my head about everything that I could do wrong that day. I was already skeptical about my pediatrics clinical because I am not the biggest fan of working with children, which I learned from working with them all summer at a camp. I thought I would not know what to do upon arriving (which I didn’t), but I figured it out. DuPont was the most amazing hospital I have ever seen. All of the windows, bright colors, friendly staff and daily activities that would go on at the hospital, was absolutely fascinating to me.

Next thing I know, we are on a “scavenger hunt” around our assigned floor for the semester. We had a list from our clinical instructor of tools, rooms, stations, phone numbers, etc… to find. This was so exciting for me, being able to look around and find things on my own on my very first day of clinical.

Later that day we were grouped in pairs and received our first patient to take 1200 vitals on. First of all, I did not get to read their chart all of the way through, so I walked into their room unaware that I had to gown and glove up because of a contractible skin disease. My patient was having a really rough couple of days, but luckily was being discharged later that day. It was so difficult trying to take vitals on my patient because of the amount of pain they were in from moving into her wheelchair. I was terrified of every move I made because I did not want to mess up and have her mother think that I was incompetent with the simple task of vitals. However, I made it out alive without hurting her and completing my 1200 vitals.

By the end of the day when it was time to leave, I could actually picture myself working with children for the rest of my career. That first day brought so much joy into my heart. To see children so ill, run-down, homesick and downhearted from spending days upon days in the hospital, and some of them hearing that they won’t be able to go back to school for the beginning of the year- made me realize how blessed I am to have the life that I have the opportunity to provide care for them.

“Hardships often prepare people for an extraordinary destiny.” —C.S. Lewis

Pumpkin Sticker

This past Friday at my Med-Surg Clinical, I had an elderly lady who has aphasia from a previous CVA. She could still say, “I’m good” or “yes/no,” but that was it. She still helped us with things she needed by pointing to things she wanted us to get for her and picking out her clothes for the day from a pile sitting next to her bed.

Whenever we would walk into her room or she would see us coming to her table in the dining room, she would smile and laugh. All day she sat in the dining room, reading her mystery novel about a secret marriage and listening to music with the other residents. At the end of our day, I put on my scrub jacket before going to tell her we were leaving for the day and that we would be back next week. I had forgotten about my pumpkin sticker I stuck on there for Halloween. When she saw my sticker, her face lit up and she started pointing at it. Without hesitation, I took my sticker off of my jacket and placed it on her shirt. Her face lit up even more than it was when she first saw it. I never expected to make someone so happy just by giving them a sticker.

It is the little things like this experience that remind me why I decided to be a nurse.

Battling Nursing Exams and Swimming

It is so weird to me that the semester is already almost over. I feel like just last week we were walking into clinical for the first time, taking our med calc exams and preparing for the worst. Everyone say junior year is the most difficult year, and I would have to agree.

Besides studying for two exams a week, going to clinical and getting assignments completed, I also worry about going to swim practice. We practice 6 days a week for 2-3 hours everyday and most Saturday’s are taken away by swim meets. Mostly I attend practice in the morning from 5:30-7:30AM, that way my afternoons are free to study and get work done. But, what comes with that is the feeling of exhaustion that settles in around 2-3PM. I knew it would not be easy to be a nursing major while being a student athlete, but it is possible.

Do I think about how I could be studying while practicing 3-6PM on Monday’s and Friday’s? Yes. Do I think it is time consuming? Yes. It has also taught me how to better manage my time and leaves me with less wiggle room to do unnecessary things and more time to study.

Being a student-athlete is definitely possible. If you want it, go get it!

My Day in the Pediatric ED

This week at duPont, I was able to experience a day in the emergency department… and it is not what you think it is like. When I first arrived, I sat in on “huddle.” Everyone on the floor gets together and reviews statistics, things going on for the day, events coming up and any other important news.

I had two options for how I would spend my day… either stay in the ED or go over to “Fast Track.” I did not know what “Fast Track” was, but my nurse told me that I would see more patients; so I ultimately chose “Fast Track.” To me, “Fast Track” seemed like an urgent care. We mostly had patient’s who presented with bronchiolitis symptoms, since it is that time of year. We did have one patient who came in for an allergic reaction and another for a sprained ankle. I got to take vital signs of the patients, weigh them, and even give some of them popsicles.

I thought my day would be very fast paced and up beat, with a lot of crazy cases coming in through the doors. However, it was a nice change of pace from being on the floor every week.

One of My Best Experiences

This week at clinical I had one of my favorite patients yet. I really enjoy working with paraplegic patients who are nonverbal and require complete care. By needing complete care, and being paraplegic, we get to learn about our patients because they require so much tending to. They are still able to laugh and even smile, and show emotions by not verbally communicating, which helps me connect with them on a deeper level.

My patient presented with pressure ulcers on her right foot from not being turned regularly by her parents. When she first came to duPont, all three wounds were unstageable. However, after 15 days of debridement, the wounds are getting smaller and starting to heal. On Wednesday, I was able to change her dressings with the help of my instructor , which was something I never expected to do at clinical. I was also able to give her medications and bolus feed through a G-tube. When I gave medications at 0800, my instructor helped me administer the medications. Then at 1200, my patient was in pain, so my primary nurse allowed me to pass her medications on my own. I loved getting to experience so many different things in one short day of clinical.

My pediatrics clinical rotation has been everything I ever could have hoped for and more. I hope that I can work in pediatrics one day and work with paraplegic patients or patients that suffer from epileptic seizures.