Making my rounds: Week 16 as a Level 2 Nursing Student

This week was awesome but I'm so sad the semester's over. This was our last week of classes and we had a final exam on Tue for PBL. Then we had two guest speakers come in for clinical skills and I gotta say, I really admire ppl who are able to stand up in front of a crowd and talk about their experiences. To be able to tell a group of 70 about your health history, how you felt after a surgical procedure, and how it's affected your life takes an incredible amount of courage and I really respect that.

We had our last class of patho with David on Wed and it was kind of sad but also exciting at the same time. I'm sad we don't have it over 3 semesters because it's such an important course but the materials are crammed in. I'm going to be a keener and study patho over the winter holiday. Go ahead and laugh at me, but who wants a nurse that can't think and make sense of a diagnosis? I would never wish that upon anybody.

This week clinical was great for me. I had one patient who was very independent and the second patient was total care. I am feeling very good about IV meds, infusions, and injections now. The patient who was total care also had dementia - something I haven't dealt with since level 1, last semester! So it had been about 6 months since I had practiced those communication skills and I was reminded of how patient I had to be. It was pretty hard getting back up to speed, but it was so nice to see at the end of the shift how he had warmed up to me! I walked in and asked if he recognized me and said, "well, I don't know, but I remember the smile!" That is one of my warm fuzzy nursing moments for this week.

Today was my very last day at MSJ and with my clinical group! I am so sad! I'm glad to be done this semester because I'm excited for the holidays, but I'm going to miss my group, instructor, and it's been such a great semester - all the experiences I've had!!! I had the opportunity to nurse with my friend from high school today and it was SO exciting! I had been looking forward to it for such a long time - when I found out that I was at this hospital, I had to contact him right away and say "I hope I'll have a shift with you!!!" and then I saw that he had signed some charting for one of my patients the week before and texted him excitedly saying that I saw his name (not the patient's name) on charting, so there was a sign of him on the unit! So I finally got to work with him and it was so exciting and I have so much respect for him.

I had my final evaluation today with my instructor and he was so encouraging. I was so sad that this semester is over that I couldn't give him any feedback about his teaching (which is great). We made a really awesome gift basket for him and he seemed so surprised! Even though he saw it in the morning...haha! We also made a bunch of things for the ward for them to eat.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to have a lot of the nurses we worked with throughout the semester there today! So we never really got to say goodbye!