Overwhelming.....

Sorry I've been out of contact for awhile. I bet you can guess why! School is completely overwhelming right now. The lectures are difficult (currently studying cardiac disorders and learning about EKG strips), the tests are really hard (can't get above a C), and my patients are incredibly sick. Even though all this is all really hard, I got a great evaluation from my instructor on Tuesday. When we're evaluated mid-semester and at the end, we fill out this form and we give ourselves a 1-5 score on many different categories. 5 is the best and I give myself a few 3's, a lot of 4's, and a few 5's. My instructor gave me mostly 4's because she said that I need some room for improvement for the end of the semester! I thought that was a pretty good complement. Lately organization has been what I'm trying to focus on for clinical. From 7am to 10am there is so much to do - first check on everyone to make sure they are alive (no one wants to start off a shift with a dead patient), deal with any immediate problems like beeping IV pumps and pain management, do head to toe assessments on each patient, take blood sugar readings for the diabetic clients, give insulin (which takes 2 RN's to check, very time consuming) when the meal trays arrive, give 8am and 9am medications, then chart everything. This doesn't account for other problems that take up lots of time such as missing medications, extra meds for nausea or pain, meds that have to be given through a naso-gastric tube, hanging IV bags....the list is endless. And as a student, we have to have our instructor or nurse around to get meds and to administer IV meds - which sometimes they can be hard to find. My instructor is a nurse at this hospital and she was telling us the other day that when she was working on Friday, one of our floor nurses saw her and asked her where the students were because it is hard for them to get all their work done without us! I'm glad the nurses see us as helping instead of annoying students who can't do anything.

So that's school stuff. Otherwise it's the same - Jake's busy and Turnip's annoying. I have spring break starting the 17th. I already have a million things I need to catch up on during the break. Some school stuff, but I also want to do some major gardening and visit a friend in the east bay who will have had a baby by then.

I hope this all made sense. I needed to type fast so I can get to my work!

By the way, our home phone is not working for a few days due to some internet thingy I'll never understand. Cell phones are fine.

Oh, and here's a cute puppy: