Tomorrow is another clinical day. I'll be turning in three physical assessments from last week: Urinary, Bowel and then we had one of our choice and I chose Skin/Tissue. We also had to complete 3 care plans--1 per assessment. Tomorrow we'll be doing another General Assessment and a Nurse-Client Interaction (NCI) assessment. I've been dreading the NCI ever since I learned we'd be doing this. Basically documenting verbal/non-verbals on both sides... recording the therapeutic communication techniques we used with our patients and the responses...along with non-therapeutic communication that undoubtedly will slip in there. Basically a blow by blow of 5 minutes of conversation. I'm not altogether sure how this will work and am fairly nervous/confused.
We'll be getting our General Assessments back tomorrow from two weeks ago, so hopefully we'll learn from our previous mistakes so that we can write up a better Gen Assessment tomorrow. The patient that I did my first Gen. Assmt on was discharged after 3 hours. So hopefully that won't happen again--as that would possibly be problematic for completing my NCI.
I'm so glad that I will not be repeating last week's late bedtime (only 4 hours or so of sleep and HR over 100 when I went to bed!)
Last week the first care plans that we did were returned to us. I think for the most part I had a well-executed CP but instead of my nsg dx being "Impaired skin integrity..." I should have had "Risk for skin integrity..." I can't remember now what my rationale was for choosing the full monty, but I remember I thought about it and thought about it. It was a confusing one. But since there weren't a lot of red markings, I felt pretty good about it. We'll be getting feedback about our first General Assessment tomorrow, but she already gave me feedback from my CET (Clinical Evaluation Tool) that said I did really well with my Nsg Dx's...so gives me hope that I'm on the right track.
Hard to believe that after tomorrow, we'll only have 4 more clinical days left. For the following two clincal days (not including tomorrow) we'll be doing a General Assessment with 3 care plans. Those weeks will be heavy weeks, but then all that's left is to do is final evaluation of ourselves and then meet with our instructor for her evaluation. I have mixed emotions about clinicals. They are anxiety producing (since this semester we don't know our patient assignment until 30 minutes before care starts) and a lot of school work. However, this is where we learn to be a nurses. Where the theoretical meets reality. I really wish I had pursued some shadowing experiences during this semester, but reality is that it's been challenging enough to get my school stuff done and still allow for some fun/balance in my life. I could probably manage to do 5-10 shadowing experiences in 5 weeks time--even with the holidays. So glad I'm not working...but I suppose that if a temp job was offered to me, I'd be foolish not to take it. Even better if the job was in healthcare field--but I don't want anything stressful!
This past week I started my "Christmas Break To Do" list. I love lists and this gives me something to look forward to--even if what I need to do/accomplish is not very fun.
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