I'm sitting in a coffee shop this sunny Saturday afternoon on Walnut street after a week of exams that left me haggard and drained by Friday. Pretty sure I just failed my first test ever - the drug exam. Easy to do when failing means missing two out of 14 questions. I hate drug exams, so many data points to memorize...and admit I only gave it a half-assed effort on Thursday night prepping for it. I was already seeing double from long nights of study for the big nursing exam we also had this week.
In any case, instead of studying for the microbiology exam and lab midterm, I thought I'd blog about how stupid I felt this week during clincals. I can't wait until I know everything and will stop sticking my foot in it on the floor! First I'll share just a couple ways I made myself look like an idiot, and will end with a story one of the seniors shared with me, that makes my little faux-pas look minuscule in comparison.
THE LITTLE RED CAP:
When you disconnect an IV temporarily, you need a Little Red Cap to put on the end of the tube, to keep it clean.
I needed to send my knee-replacement patient to physical therapy on Tuesday, and knew she needed to be disconnected in order to go there. I'll admit, I'm still intimidated by IV's...even though we've been trained. The main priority I was given: (since post-op joint replacements are loathe to do this)...Get. Your. Patient. To. PT. Don't put up with their whines. It is BEST for them to be UP and MOVING. (Of course...if you attempt to do this by yourself, without help, we will knock your block off...)
So, I was stressed, since she'd been hinting all morning that getting out of bed would be, impossible. I hunted down my co-assigned nurse and told her we were all ready to go, except for disconnecting the IV. She raised her brows and said, "you up for it?" In my head I freaked and said NO WAY! But, robotically I answered, "Hell yeah!" (Because I'm a junkie for all new experiences.) She smiled like I had given the right answer, and handed me the packet which contained the Little Red Cap. (This is lucky, because I never would have remembered I needed it.) She reviewed what I was to do, and then sent me on my way. The PT assistant was in the room already, and he wasn't going to disconnect it. Not his job. But he, and the patient, were waiting for me. More stress.
I fumbled around with everything. Stopped the IV pump. Closed the clamps everywhere to make sure we weren't all about to get very wet. Wiggled, and strained to get the danged tube out of her IV port without actually pulling it out of her hand. Finally, got it! I popped that little red cap on the end coming out of her hand, and hung the end of the tube connected to the pump back up on the pole, always afraid the end would touch the floor, or anything else, and become contaminated. Since I had nothing to cover it up with, I used a clean glove, as my previous clinical instructor said would work in a pinch. It hung up there like a deflated, blue UDDER. But my patient was free, and together, the aid and I got her OOB and to PT, without any calamities and despite her protests.
SO proud of myself, I asked my clinical instructor to come in and show me how to shut off my beeping IV pump, which knew it was no longer connected to a person and was beeping it's complaints. She walked in and stopped short when she saw my blue udder hanging up there.
"Kristine...what's that?"
"Uh...I didn't want it to get dirty."
Smiling now, "That's good, but why didn't you use a cap?"
"I only had one, so it's on the patient's hand."
"You don't need one on the patient. Their end is has a valve that closes and keeps it clean. The red cap goes on THIS end." (Pointing to my blue udder.) Instantly, I remembered that detail from our training.
FAIL!
I spent the rest of the morning wondering how I could get that red cap off my patient's hand before my co-assigned nurse saw it and realized what a dumbass I am. It was just this bright red thing in the wrong place that vibrantly announced that the student nurse didn't know jack to the whole world! Turns out I didn't get to it in time. Instead I confessed as my lead nurse looked puzzled up at the blue udder. She just smiled and said she'd beat me later for it, but we had other things to do...
(I love her!)
THE BLADDER SCAN:
Later that day, with the same awesome nurse, I proved, yet again, how much of a newbie I am. She allowed me to do the bladder scan on the same patient - now back from PT and exhausted, but who also hadn't pee'd since her catheter had been removed that morning. That can be bad, so she needed a scan, and I was going to do it! After my nurse reviewed the procedure, I bared the patient's belly, got the gel on my instrument and placed it over the bladder area, gently rotating it around a bit.
"Just hold it still and point it at the bladder hon...we ain't having a baby here!"
Groan. The nurse and the patient both got a kick out of the look on my face.
In any case, these stories are helpful because I PROMISE YOU, I will never swirl the bladder scanner or misuse the Little Red Cap ever again! :)
And hopefully, any student nurses reading this never will either!
I was relaying this story to a few seniors on the porch late one night and they loved them, but one of them blew mine out of the water as she relayed what she had done in her first year on the floor:
THE ICE CHIPS:
This student nurse went to her busy clinical instructor and asked what else she could do that day, her patient was settled and resting comfortably. The instructor waved her off, busy with another student, "just go fill up the ice for every patient on the unit."
So she did.
Then she entered the room of a patient who had just passed away. She looked like she was sleeping, and the student nurse had no idea she was deceased. To the daughter who was quietly weeping, she said "would your mom like some ice chips?"
"She's GONE!" the daughter howled at her!
The student scrammed from the room.
And that's how she encountered her first dead person. She offered them ice chips!
I tell you, I think there's a book here. In nursing school, as punishing as it is, sometimes if you don't laugh...you'll cry.
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment