Week 14 as a Level 2 Nursing Student

We had our second 12 hour shift this week on Fri so we had Thursday off which was a nice break! We had our last PBL class of the semester and we practiced irrigating bladders this week in lab.

This week in clinical, I had such a good shift! It was really busy for me and I felt kind of crazy, but I really enjoyed it. I got to do a lot of practicing on IVs both on a pump and by gravity!! My morning started off really disjointed and I felt really behind and I was so thrown off by drawing up two different types of insulin into one syringe - I had to do it three times and I was so frustrated!!!! I can verbalize what I need to do, but one time I pulled the safety sheath over the needle and had to restart, the second time I was 1 unit short so I pulled up a bit and ended up getting 5 units and had to restart yet again. But I got it the third time, thank god! I was so mad at myself for taking so long! Then I found out that one of my patients had been discharged already and I didn't even know! That made me even MORE mad at myself!! Hello! What was going on with myself! I was so frazzled. Then I went to do my patient's head to toe assessment and they started crying!!! I was surprised but also not really surprised because their affect while I was in their room was quite sad the entire time. So I guess crying was a natural progression. It was kind of sad because I asked if they wanted to talk about anything and if they could tell us about what was bothering them and they said declined. When I talked to my instructor, he asked how that made me feel, but I knew that it wasn't personal - it's not like she hates me and doesn't want to talk to me, it's just the situational thing, really.

But it was so exciting for me because at the end of the shift when I was saying goodbye, they asked if I was going to be there the day after and I said no and she seemed kind of disappointed and then they smiled at me!! MY PATIENT WHO DIDN'T WANT TO SPEAK TO ME AT ALL DURING THE FIRST PART OF MY SHIFT SMILED AT ME!!!! Celebrate your victories, right? Yay!

My second patient was really tired because they had just come up from surgery and I got to do a lot of work with gravity IV stuff and it was just really exciting to be able to practice. The patient and her husband were really nice, too. There was a lot of family support and she was super sweet.

Almost done level 2!!! Woohoo! I'm going to miss my clinical group and my instructor so much!!!