Let's start at the beginning. I've mentioned before that many times I have felt upset with myself for not going to college right after high school. But the more I move along through the program the more I am convinced that this was all part of God's master plan. I eep thinking that maybe if I would have done nursing school at 18yrs old I'd probably would have failed. I'm not trying to be negative about it or insinuate that I wasn't smart enough. I'm simply saying that I wasn't as dedicated or as prepared as I am now.
Nursing 1, which was Fundamentals of Nursing, was fairly easy for me. I like to think that this was due to my employment at the hospital working as a nurse aide. I was familiar with many of the topics, safety, infection control, and protocols parts of it. Nursing concepts, care plans, prioritizing not so well. Familiarity to the other topics made a lot of it seemed like common sense and I say that only because that's what I dealt with a work. The style of nursing questions and taking Pharmacology at the same time as nursing as was the most difficult part of this semester.
Clinical for nursing one was also pretty straight forward for me. It involved a lot of taking vitals, giving baths, and toileting patients which was what I did on a day to day basis at work. Now, collecting information, assessment, passing medication, and constantly being put on the spot when giving said medication, charting, and relating nursing concepts was something I as not used to. That took a lot of time to get used to.
My assigned unit was a cardiac floor consisting mainly of med/sug patients with some sort of cardiac problem, step-down patients which is simply patients that require a higher level of care but not high enough to be on a critical care unit, and it included a section of either 8 or 10 rooms exclusively for patients who had just had open heart surgery. These patients would be there several days being closely monitored and then be moved to another room out of the open heart area. It was a great experience from beginning to end. I had the opportunity to insert foley, give meds and hang IV with my instructor or a nurse, give injections, etc. the list goes on.
The best part of this programmed is that it is part of a hospital so the clinical experience are amazing!
I don't want to make this post super long so stay tuned for part 2 of my first year in nursing school.
To be continue...
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