From what I can gather from the hospital's website, the patients I'll be working with will be recovering from conditions or treatments/surgeries related to:
Cardiac - Aortic, Mitral, Tricuspid & Pulmonary Valve Surgeries, Coronary Artery Bypass, Aortic Dissection & Aortic Aneurysms, Atrial Fibrillation, Heart Failure Surgery/Transplant.
General Thoracic - Lung Cancer, Esophageal Cancer, Hiatal Hernia & GERD, Achalasia, Malignant Mesothelioma & Other Pleural Diseases, Emphysema & Lung Volume Reduction Surgery, Mediastinal Tumors, Hyperhidrosis, Indeterminant Lung Nodules, Airway Diseases (Tracheal or Bronchial), Lung Transplantation.
Definitely a lot of very interesting, very complex conditions which will hopefully provide many, many learning experiences! We'll only spend eight clinical days on the unit, plus one in ICU for this rotation/clinical. Very different from last semester where we were on the unit twice a week. I don't think there will be time to be bored...and I'm expecting Tuesday nights are going to be terribly long, but hopefully interesting. Last semester I got so bored doing careplan after careplan for knee replacements!
I think of all the units I could have been put on, and I am so glad to be one of the few students to be assigned to this unit. Even though this cardiac & lung stuff scares me, I know it's a great environment in which to overcome my fear and it will help cement the theory I'm learning as I will be applying and experiencing it in the clinical setting! *BUT hopefully no one I know will be a patient there!!
My clinical instructor works on this unit, so she knows the staff and this population of patients well. She'll know where things are and know the protocols and the routine on the unit. And because she knows these types of patients well, she will be able to challenge us more than someone who doesn't normally work with cardio-thoracic patients.
Today after clinical orientation I decided it would be in my best interest to try to log on to EPIC (electronic medical records system) and see if I remembered my log-on info. Well, turns out my password had expired, so I had to call the help desk to get it reset. Then when I logged in, I had to search/add my instructor as co-signer, then needed to change unit preferences to this new unit and not last semester's unit. It took me about 30 minutes to get it all straight, but now I'll be ready to go when I go in for clinical prep next Tuesday. Only one other person from my clinical stayed and made effort to log-in and get things straight. While I typically enjoy helping people figure things out on the computer, I am going to be really annoyed next Tuesday if someone asks me how to access EPIC (when they see that I'm able to log-in). I don't think it's fair for them to steal my prep time (or any other prepared person's time), when they could have easily stayed after clinical today to resolve this for themselves. I just have a feeling that most stduents will be surprised that they will have issues logging in next Tuesday.If you are a fellow student, and you are reading this, I HIGHLY suggest that you go early to your unit on your prep day (right after lecture) and attempt to log-in and get everything sorted out. This way when assignments are posted, you can get started right away.
- Chances are you will need to call the Help Desk (# is on the computer desktop) to get them to update your password. Be sure you have your user ID to give them.
- Once you initially log-in to EPIC, you will have to search/select your unit. Use search tab...you can search "2 East" or "6 Central" etc... and hopefully it will pop up for you to select.
- Then you will need to search/select a new co-assign. Last semester this was my clinical instructor. Thankfully my new clinical instructor is in the system because she works at the hospital. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW HOW TO SPELL THEIR NAME!
- Once you are into the guts of EPIC, you will realize that you need to change your preferences so that it will bring up your unit's patients. When I got in, mine still had my last semester's unit. It took a little "playing around" and coaxing from the deep far recesses of my brain to figure out how to do this. It was about 5 months ago since we learned to do this in our EPIC training. I don't remember the exact folder to look in, but there is one folder in the sidebar that will contain what you need. If you find your unit listed, you just need to click and drag it up and drop it into the "My Unit" folder (that was set up last semester). After you put your new unit in, you can delete your old unit. If you have a "My Patient" folder, just delete whatever patient (Mr. Jones) may still be in there from last semester, but DO NOT delete the "My Patient" folder. Once we have our patient assignment, you can drag that patient into that folder.
- If you can't figure out how to change your unit, you will need to ask one of the unit nurses or PCA/PCT's. . .and hopefully they'll have time to help you.
I think I might be smart to write these directions down (with specific folder names) in the event that I'm at this same hospital next semester and have to figure this out again! I REALLY wish that the hospital had provided us with a written summary of our EPIC training that we can consult afterwards. But no. :(
No comments:
Post a Comment