Study Up

Another week has come to an end.  While this week didn't have a crisis, like my previous week, it still had it's moments.  I thoroughly enjoyed my snow day (and secretly hope it's not my last!), but was back to the grind the next morning.  I was up by 4:20am to get ready for my last clinical day.  I gave myself a solid 10 minutes to warm up and scrape my car.  By 5:15 I was outside, freezing and probably waking up my neighbors while I scraped my car.  My carpool buddy arrived at 5:30 and we stopped at DD to grab some munchkins for the floor.  We had almost a full clinical day.  I was given a patient who was in a fair amount of pain which translated to not very talkative or overly cooperative.  I kept remembering what a previous student told me, "it's a hospital, not a hotel."  The things I was requiring this patient to do was all for his own good, to help him improve and to help get him out of the hospital sooner.  I tried not to take his mood personally.  It is a skill I need to work on.  I was working with a newer nurse.  She was great.  She took time to explain procedures and the steps she took.  She was very empathetic as she only graduated from nursing school three short years ago.  This made me feel a lot more comfortable and gave me hope that my extreme stress, fear, lack of confidence and my knowledge will all get better...in time!  Our patient also needed to have a Foley catheter inserted.  My instructor was in the room as well as the nurse and I was given morning meds.  The patient required a bladder scan to assess if he needed the catheter.  Bladder was full, the catheter was required.  I simply stated, "um, yeah, I would love to observe."  Both my instructor and the nurse stopped, looked at me and said, "oh no, you're doing it!"  Their reasoning was, I would only be more intimidated and nervous if I don't do it in clinical and once I am a nurse, I would be used and abused when it got out that I had yet to insert a Foley on my own.  Thankfully, we got right to it, so I didn't have a ton of time to get more nervous.  The nurse assisted me and walked me through the procedure.  I was able to maintain my sterile field and easily insert the catheter.  I was lucky, as putting a catheter in a man is a lot easier than in a woman.  I felt more confident and so glad I had the opportunity!

The rest of the day sort of dragged on.  I was ready to be done and wanted to get home to finish cramming for our med surge exam.  We left the floor around three and then individually met with our instructor for our final evaluation.  It was pretty anticlimactic.  I earned an A-, which also gets averaged with our psych clinical, so for the fall, my clinical grade is an A-.  Not too shabby and so glad to be done with med surge!!  Next up, pediatrics!!!

Yesterday was our med surge exam.  I was again, terrified and beyond nervous.  I got to school about an hour early and met up with a small group and joined their study session.  I have found, talking through concepts and ideas right before the exam has helped me numerous times.  This exam followed suite.  I know I was able to easily answer a handful of test questions solely from our 30 minute discussion.  The exam wasn't as bad as I was envisioning.  Our med surge instructors are on the ball.  After the last student finishes the exam, the are quickly sent off to be graded.  We then get to come into the lecture hall and go through the exam with all the answers and the rationale for each answer.  We had our last pharmacology lecture right after the exam review and within about a half hour, our exam grades were posted!  I passed, I was hoping for a higher grade, BUT, I expected a much lower grade, so I was thrilled :)  Our pharm lecture went over a bit, so by 8:30 I was losing my mind and had totally tuned out.  Lectures are all done for the semester!!  Now all that is left is to study and study more and then when I think I have had enough, STUDY MORE!!  I have three exams in three days.  Up first is our cumulative psych and med surge final, only worth 40% of our final grade.  No pressure!  That is on Tuesday.  Wednesday we have our nursing class final.  This course was mostly online, and then student taught by student group presenters.  We are all in a temporary panic about how and what to study for this exam.  Finally, our pharmacology final is on Thursday night.  I am dreading that one, but good news, we get to use our drug guides AND the excel spreadsheets our professor has posted for review for us.  I am not sure I can do as well on this exam, but I am sure going to try!
One exam at a time, so my focus this weekend will be to go through all of our power point slides from September through December in psych and med surge.  Ready....GO!