I've been so busy!

So I'm just now getting around to blogging.  This has been the craziest week of my life (school-wise) and it's almost over!  This week I had a paper due (which ended up being 16 pages long) on Monday, first day of clinical on Monday, Pharmacology exam on Tuesday (which I got a B on!), a difficult lab today along with a medication administration quiz and tomorrrow is our Theory exam.  Insane!

The medication administration exam is especially scary.  It is only 10 questions, but you can only miss 1 and pass.  Most schools require a 100% to pass, but luckily ours does not.  The theory is that if you can't properly calculate 10 drug dosages in class, you are probably going to make a mistake with meds with your patient, which could be either below an effective dose or fatal.  But... I passed!  I actually got 100% on it, so I'm pretty darn thrilled. 

Then we had our lab today in which we learned how to do lung/heart assessment.  This is SO difficult.  The heart is not very large, yet we are supposed to be able to hear 5 different points on it!  Then add in the fact that the patient is breathing, this becomes very difficult!

Backing up to Monday, we had our first actual patient clinical.  We each have 2 patients, one which we share with 3 people, and 1 which we share with 1 person.  Both of my patients are really interesting people that I think I am going to enjoy working with.  I'm amazed at how autonomous we are allowed/expected to be.  I assisted with a patient fall and answered call lights, which is incredibly scary.  You have no idea what you are going to see when you walk into a patient's room and they have their call light on.  We have recently learned in lecture that every patient has the right to not be in pain and no patient should have to prove their level of pain.  If a patient says they hurt, we are to believe them and do whatever we need to do to safely alleviate their pain.  We are their advocate.  So it's very trying to walk into a patients room who has advanced dementia who is complaining of pain and just got their pain meds.  There is not much I can do besides distract them and empathize with them.  I had to brush up on pain management techniqes within the RN scope of practice this week so that I'm prepared.  Time to practice massage!

But I'm making this sound depressing and scary.  It's not!  Sometimes dementia can make things easier when you consider that it is easy to identify what makes the patient happy and what makes them upset.  I will never run out of things to talk to my patient about!

Theory exam is tomorrow, and I think I've crammed as much information as I have into my brain.  I should probably go to bed.  Sorry I got behind on this, Mom!  It really is therapeutic to journal about this experience, so I should keep up on it!