Nursing Fundamentals and Lab

Thursdays focus more on developing hand-on skills. Morning lecture relates various safety risks and complications patients can experience. Afternoon lab applies those ideas. Today the big topic was mobility, so we spent the afternoon hefting people from beds to stretchers and back, and lifting each other into wheelchairs. I actually enjoy Thursdays a little because they're not critical thinking courses. I get a little break from the "assess assess assess" part of nursing and concentrate on the physical activities.

Before lab began I actually took a test on putting on sterile gloves. There's this way you have took hook your hand along the inside and not allow the sterile and non-sterile fields to touch... it was easy. Those are the kinds of tests I want to take every time. The next practical exam I have to take in that class involves reading a chart and drawing up medicine, then injecting it. It's good, since once you understand all the rules, you're pretty much set. Little study involved.

Of course, my break didn't extend into the evening. I still had paperwork left to do from Wednesday. Every part of our clinical experience is painstakingly documented on all kinds of forms. Skin, hair, nails, musculoskeletal system, pain... and every week we add something to keep track of. By the end of the year I'll be carrying "Patho" and "Drug" cards describing everything wrong with the patient, what all their meds do, and all the potential complications, interactions, and interventions I need to be aware of in order to best serve them. Which is as it should be, nurses need to understand disease. But it amounts to a lot of busywork.

Class may or may not be cancelled tomorrow. Hurricane Rita is bearing down on us all, and the slightest bit of wind here seems to knock the power out for a week. So we'll just see what happens. If I lose power, I'll probably not post for a while.