(no subject)
YippiKiYay Mother Fuckers! Today I was a nurse. An awesome nurse. I was also a respiratory therapist, a doctor and a surgeon. heehee
Hope you all had an awesome weekend!
I chose a difficult patient today (I had her yesterday and knew she was going to need some constant interventions to keep her oxygenated, and that's good for me to get skills and everyone else would want to sit at the desk) and tried to figure out why her oxygen saturation wouldn't get above 91%. She was on oxygen so it should have been at 99-100%. When I had her do all my little nursey interventions it just went down. I got respiratory therapy involved, a breathing treatment made it go down further. She got more out of breath- I got a monitor for her heart. I had my preceptor RN call the doc. Who ordered more chest x-rays and eventually I got to help with a paracentesis. We drew 700 ml of fluid out of her chest. It was a BUSY day. But good. I learned so much today because I had to do so much- in the minute- on my own. I fumbled with some little things, but I was honest with the family- they all knew I was new and doing my best and at any time I could go and get my nurse-but they were calm and comfortable that I was doing a great job caring for my patient. Today was a real confidence builder, and Stoic Preceptor said, as she was leaving me behind, "Great job today. REALLY." Tomorrow we'll have only four patients come from surgery instead of our regular 14-24. I couldn't be happier! I'm beat!!!
Hope you all had an awesome weekend!
I chose a difficult patient today (I had her yesterday and knew she was going to need some constant interventions to keep her oxygenated, and that's good for me to get skills and everyone else would want to sit at the desk) and tried to figure out why her oxygen saturation wouldn't get above 91%. She was on oxygen so it should have been at 99-100%. When I had her do all my little nursey interventions it just went down. I got respiratory therapy involved, a breathing treatment made it go down further. She got more out of breath- I got a monitor for her heart. I had my preceptor RN call the doc. Who ordered more chest x-rays and eventually I got to help with a paracentesis. We drew 700 ml of fluid out of her chest. It was a BUSY day. But good. I learned so much today because I had to do so much- in the minute- on my own. I fumbled with some little things, but I was honest with the family- they all knew I was new and doing my best and at any time I could go and get my nurse-but they were calm and comfortable that I was doing a great job caring for my patient. Today was a real confidence builder, and Stoic Preceptor said, as she was leaving me behind, "Great job today. REALLY." Tomorrow we'll have only four patients come from surgery instead of our regular 14-24. I couldn't be happier! I'm beat!!!