Adventures of a smart-ass

May 2008


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	Wed, May. 14th, 2008 09:46 pm

The end is near

Of the semester, that is.

Today was my final lecture of the semster. Thursday and Friday are my last clinical days, and the next week I have Finals Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings (oh joy).

I'm going to miss this semester - I knew going into it that this was the semester I had been waiting for (with Maternity and Pediatrics), and the rest of the time in the program is going to drag as I wait to get back to Pediatrics as a career.

The lecture this morning was in Pediatrics, and as much as I came to dread the reading from the PowerPoint slides, it was classes like today that made me appreciate and respect our instructor.

The last topic we addressed was Muscular Dystrophy. It's a broad category of differing issues, and we focused on the most common one. Which is always fatal, but can take years before that happens.

This brought up another topic, something that most people never think of (or don't want to think of) - helping a child end their life. More so than adults, kids seem to be far more aware of when it's time to let go. Unfortunately their parents aren't always on the same page. And even more unfortunately, there isn't a real support system for when this happens. In the U.S., there is only one Pediatric Hospice - and it's here in the Bay Area.

As nurses, it's our job to help the family deal with such unfathomable situations. Even more so when the child has decided they are ready to stop fighting, but the parents are still struggling to find any solution they can. As my instructor said, it's one of the hardest things one could ever have to face. But it happens, sadly, more than most people want to accept.

When asked by a classmate what we, as nurses, can do when the wishes of the child and the request of the parents are at odds, the instructor answered with what I thought was probably some of the best advice she gave us all semester - to remember that the parents have been fighting to find hope where ever they can, but there comes a time when we need to help them understand that it's time to move from finding hope to finding mercy. It's not about them - it's about their child and what is best for that child, which is what they have been fighting for all along.

(Why do I see myself at some future point being a Pediatric Hospice Nurse? I felt her passion about the subject today, and it resonated with me. I have no idea why, really, but it did).

Tags: nursing classes, pediatrics
Current Location: home
Current Mood:

contemplative

	Sat, May. 3rd, 2008 11:39 am

Nursing school update

It's been awhile since I posted about classes. Only two more weeks until Finals - woohoo!!

Clinicals are going great - last Friday I spent the shift following a nurse in Pediatric Oncology. Once again, all the nurses there were amazing. She had me giving meds and eyedrops, and otherwise helping with her patients. One of the nurses offered to be my preceptor also :-)
And, as with my time in the PICU, I felt like I had found a place where I could easily work. Yes, it can be difficult, but the parents and kids I interacted with were all incredible - strong, funny, caring, and had developed strong relationships with the nurses. And I like that - I like the idea of getting to know a child and family and helping them over a course of time, seeing the progress (and setbacks). Just one more reason for me to get a job at CHO.

The Wednesday before I went on my first pre-natal visit with Ami, the midwife/classmate I'm apprenticing with this July. The couple were great, the husband was VERY happy to have another guy there. I'll be visiting them again and there when she gives birth. :-)

Otherwise school has been moving along. One of the things we had to do this part of the semester was participate in a Simulation Lab (with a robot baby hooked to a PC). At first we were all annoyed - but turned out that it was a decent experience. We got ot do a lot more hands-on stuff that we would never get to do in the hospital. And in one of the simulations (where I was the parent), the baby coded and then flatlined. Even though the baby was fake, it was still difficult. No one wants to experience a child dying while they give their best effort to keep them alive - but it happens, and I think it was great that they had us experience it in a safe setting. (The downside to the sim lab was the tech guy - he was beyond annoying...).

Now it's just two more weeks of classes and clinicals, then a week of Finals. My last Final is May 23rd. Then summer break starts - woohoo!! I can almost taste the freedom now. :-)

Oh, and on May 23rd, it will be exactly one year until I graduate....it won't get here soon enough.

Tags: nursing classes
Current Location: gym front desk
Current Mood:

contemplative

	Fri, Mar. 30th, 2007 09:44 am

Nursing classes catch up

Nursing classes…

I haven’t posted about classes in awhile. By the end of the week I’m usually so wiped out that I have little energy left to do a post. So here’s a quick (ok, sorta quick) update as to how things are going…

Assessment Lecture

Going fine. The big drama in class was a student last Monday raising her hand at the beginning of lecture and basically accusing the professor of reading directly from the book and asking if there was any way to make the lecture more interesting. Yeah. Seriously. I was lucky enough to have slept in and missed that class, but I heard all about it in my afternoon class. And as much as I’ve complained about the professor and how she tends to read from her slides and notes and rarely ever deviates, at the same time I would NEVER confront her in front of the entire class. If it was a big enough problem, I’d go to her one-on-one first. It was amazing not only how many of my classmates came to me to get my opinion on it, but also the number who figured I’d have supported this classmate and her confronting the professor this way. Also, the professor herself called me into her office to run it by me and get my take on her lectures. Seeing how vulnerable and upset she was, I knew it wasn’t the time or place to address what I see as the issues with her lectures. I also know that for some people in class her teaching style is perfect, so I just bring my laptop and follow along (and check email or do other reading).

Foundations of Nursing

Same professor. Going fine. My big issue with foundations is the fact that they spend all this time focusing on all the women who made a contribution to nursing and never once mention any men. For a profession that proclaims to want more men in the field and keeps asking how to get them into the field, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Also, as much as I know the history of Nursing was influenced by Florence Nightingale, enough with the idolizing her already! Come on, the woman claimed the Germ Theory was bogus, is the reason for the “feminization” of nursing (matronly, submissive, moral women only) and was also the reason men were not allowed to be nurses (she refused from the beginning, claiming only women could be caring). Let’s just say I have a LOT of issues around these subjects – and I haven’t been quiet about them. J

Pharmacology

One of the two classes where I know each time I show up I’m going to learn something. Drugs are fascinating!! The professor is amazing – funny, smart and never boring. Oh, and the cute, young gay Italian boy keeps saving me a seat next to him each week…hehe

Skills Lab

The one class I really love. The instructor is amazing (and cute too, which never hurts!). Each class we get hands on experience doing the assessments we discussed in lecture that week. He has yet to have us watch a video (the other Skills Lab seems to do nothing but watch videos). There are just 15 of us, and the camaraderie in the class helps make it what it is. As of now I can do catheters, ET tubes, assessments, change dressings on wounds, and other skills. Next week we do subcutaneous injections and after Spring Break it’s starting IV lines. And thanks to our instructor I know that what I’m learning is based in reality, not just something out of a textbook.

The great news for us is that he has been hired as a faculty member and will be teaching full-time next semester – his knowledge and talent are sorely needed in the Nursing Dept. I just hope the old biddies in the program back off and let him do his thing. There are several women in the program who seem determined to keep things the way they’ve always been because that’s the way it is, rather than accepting something new and refreshing that actually engages the students.

Overall, I’m pretty happy (ok, very happy) with this semester. At this point I’m getting A’s in all my classes – which if I’m really going to go on and get a Masters and become a Family Nurse Practitioner I need to keep up.

Two midterms this coming week – Mon and Fri – then it’s Spring Break. WOOHOO!!

Ok, off to studying….

Tags: nursing classes
Current Location: gym front desk