Clinical day 2

Yesterday was awesome! When I first came on to the unit, initially I felt overwhelmed though. What we do is we get assigned to a nurse and then we pick or the Nurse recommends our patients. I introduced myself to her and she told me right away she had 2 good ones for me.

A post-op spinal fusion and a post-op I & D (Incision and Drainage). They were good, IV starts, IV piggy back meds, and a couple JP drains to play with. However I listen to both reports and realize the OR nurse is the only one reporting. I thought, "Well that's weird, maybe the previous shift hadn't had time to record yet." So I get to both charts and realize they were Post-op.....RECENT Post-op, they had both just gotten to the floor within the hour. So I was just a tad bit concerned about my abilities, not to mention there were frequent vitals to monitor, orders to check and making sure the pharmacy has and was processing their post-op meds.

After the first few hours though, things calmed down, both patients were stable and doing fine. They were also both really nice and one was a jokester who made me laugh every time I went in. He even sang my praises when my instructor assisted me with the IV antibiotic.

The IV start didn't happen until there was 15 minutes left for me on the floor. There was another IV start for my classmate at the same time (she had less experience, had only tried one in the past) so my instructor asked me if I was comfortable doing it with my co-nurse. Of course I was! (More comfortable, actually) She said I did great. It went perfectly, first stick, no digging, patent IV. I hope my co-nurse reported this back to my instructor.

I felt more like a nurse yesterday, then I have in any clinical day so far. It was great!