girl in greenwood

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I have been extremely busy, however. Since I last posted, I have:

1. Moved to the apartment that I described previously.

2. Unpacked some of our stuff, although we still have a lot of boxes.

3. Cleaned our entire old house top to bottom, including painting two rooms.

4. Cleaned out the gardens and patio at the old house ALL IN ONE DAY. I don't recommend this method. Especially when it means toting 10 bags of bark mulch around the yard. I am only 5 feet tall and those bags come up to my waist, so even though I can carry that much weight, it's like wrestling a bear for me to pick up the bag.

5. Worked 4 days/week at the hospital in a team nursing setting - I'm paired with an RN and we take 6 or 7 patients... I provide primary care for half of them, ask the nurse for help with the things I can't do (hang IV meds and give narcotics, mostly), and act as the nurse's aide when s/he needs an extra pair of hands. It's hard work but it's going well. I'm getting mostly positive feedback from my nurses, and the non-positive feedback has all been constructive criticism which I welcome, because it helps me learn.

We moved on Monday and I worked Tuesday-Thursday. Today is my first day off at the apartment and I am unpacking the kitchen (among other things). This morning R* and I went over to a bakery/cafe in the new neighborhood and had a lovely coffee & pastry & fruit salad breakfast before he went to work. I walked back to the apartment and man, this is a nice neighborhoood. Beautiful houses and gardens and so many trees. I even paused and watched a hummingbird in someone's garden for a few minutes. I think once we get settled in the apartment, we're going to really like living here.

Labels: house, moving, work

If the medication record says that your elderly patient is supposed to be wearing a nitroglycerin patch from 8:00 pm until 12:00 noon, you should go in and look for the patch at the start of the shift instead of waiting until nearly noon, at which point you will go into the room to remove the patch and instead find that your patient has not had a patch on all night and is now having angina (chest pain, for the laypeople in the audience). Because then you have to take some vital signs and get even more concerned when your patient's heart rate is in the 130s and he's saying, "It hurts here" and pointing to his jaw and chest. And then you'll have to go find the doctor and give your first-ever report to a real live doctor in an urgent situation. And the doctor will look alarmed and say "get a nitro patch on him stat and call for a stat EKG" and then you'll start to wonder if Something Bad is going to happen. And then the guy comes in with the EKG machine and says "Hmm, sinus tachycardia, oops, there's some a-fib" [translation: his heart is being really fast and sometimes it's not beating right]. Criminy.

The outcome was all right by the end of my shift - the patient was in a tele bed [translation: he was hooked up to a machine to monitor his heart rate and blood pressure automatically] and got some medications and was doing fine.

You can bet that if I see another order for a patch of any kind on a patient, I'm going to go look for that patch with a flashlight and a hunting dog, if necessary.

Labels: nursing, work

I'm officially done with orientation at my new job. Last week I spent two days shadowing a nurse and two days caring for one patient pretty much on my own. This week I've cared for 2 patients on my own for a couple of days. I'm off tomorrow, but when I go back, I'll be practicing the team nursing concept. It will be kind of like being an LPN, I think - I will be teamed with an RN, and we will be assigned a larger-than-normal set of patients. For example, if a normal patient load for one nurse is 5 patients, my team would be assigned 8 patients and I would take 3 of them, or something like that. The reason that it needs to be a team effort is because my employer doesn't permit nurse techs to handle IVs, like, at all. All I can do with IVs is assess IV sites and troubleshoot the pumps.

I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it... I'm doing a decent job of taking care of my patients, and I know where most supplies are and what the usual routines on the floor are like. Of course there are things I can work on - that will never end, I'm sure! I think the first thing I need to do is create a brain sheet that will help me stay organized better.

I'll get my first paycheck later this week. I think that will be the best part. Being a broke student is frustrating!

Labels: nursing, work

I was offered the nurse tech job at Neighborhood Private Hospital this morning. :) I will be working between half and full time this summer after classes end. They call the unit "acute care" but in this hospital, it really means "place where we stick everyone who is too sick to go home but not sick enough to get sent up to the big hospital with an ICU". So there are patients who are a day or two out of routine surgery, like appendectomy or joint replacement, patients with a serious illness like pneumonia, patients with an infected wound or something that needs frequent nursing care, and the occasional sick elderly person who is a DNR and therefore doesn't need ICU facilities. I think the variety sounds fantastic! I really dislike working on a unit like the one I'm on for clinicals, where virtually all the patients are there for the same reason (it's an ortho unit and everyone has a shiny new hip or knee joint, mostly). It's boring and routine and I don't learn many new things. So my summer job sounds like I'll be able to learn a little about all kinds of stuff!

Now I just have to get through the rest of the quarter. First up: finish the next three weeks of clinical and get some free time back. On deck: write giant research paper.

Labels: nursing school, work

I just had an unexpected phone interview for a nurse tech job at Neighborhood Private Hospital. It would start in June and it would be a day shift position and they would pay me $15 an hour.

I also got up my nerve and called the ICU at Fancy University Hospital where I had a fantastic observation experience last week and asked them if they had any jobs. I spoke to the charge nurse and while she didn't have any answers for me off the top of her head, she was very nice and enthusiastic and said she would discuss with the nurse manager and call me back.

So it looks like I will have an income again, someday. And when I do, I have a rapidly growing list of things on which I wish to spend my money, including but not limited to:

getting my highlights touched up
buying a metric shitload of new bras
buying some jeans
getting a new coffee doo-dad such as this one (my small size french press broke after 11 years of faithful service. RIP, little press!)
additional old lady support stockings (I did nursing science last week and wore support stockings one day and no stockings the next day. Day 1 = no sore feet. Day 2 = sore feet. Conclusion: support hose are where it's at.)

My desires are pretty simple! Now just cross your fingers that I land a good job.

Labels: nursing school, work