Saturday, September 25, 2010

dragon boats




A few weeks ago Jeff and I participated in the Dragon Boat Festival. The festival is a fundraiser for one of the hospital systems in our area, Mountain States Health Alliance (who is also Jeff's employer). East Tennessee is apparently the Mecca for hospitals. We have one on every corner.

The festival is basically a bunch a teams from local businesses, churches and organizations who raise money for Mountain States and then get together one Saturday to race paddle boats. This is harder than you might think, especially when you have 20 people on a boat and you're all trying to paddle at the same time. Okay, that still sounds like it should be simple, but surprisingly it's not. Anyway, Jeff's office got a team together. We definitely didn't win, but we had a fun time even though it was pouring down rain most of the time. Jeff's office did raise the most money though, so hooray for them. We also made the newspaper's website (which totally counts by the way) but I can't find the video anymore.


Parrot or dog? You decide.

Friday, September 17, 2010

things learned

Things I have learned in nursing school this month:

How to write a nursing diagnosis, care plan and how to chart.

How to do dosage calculations.

How to do a sterile dressing change. Is it a bad sign that I felt a little nauseous while watching the videos on wound care? Those wounds can be pretty disgusting (and that's without knowing how they smell).

How to put in a Foley catheter. I've heard some pretty gross stories about actually doing this in real life. Again, gross. Also, if your instructor, who is supposed to be watching you and correcting you while you practice, is talking with another instructor about their cats (no joke), how the heck are you supposed to know if you're doing things the right way? I blame her if I stick a tube where it's not supposed to go.

How to give intramuscular injections. Hold the syringe like a dart at a 90-degree angle and go for it (making sure you're aiming for the right landmark, of course). If you hit bone just pull back and act normal/don't freak out. Yikes.

Practicing on dummies is NOT going to be the same as doing these things on real people.

When you ask the same question to different instructors, expect to get a different answer from each one of them. Helpful, very helpful.

I believe enemas and ostomies are coming up in the near future. Sounds like fun. Hope I don't barf while watching the videos!

You might be questioning my choice of nursing by my usage of the words gross, nauseous and barf in this post. I'm hoping these things will get better with experience. I can handle it, but it doesn't mean I'm not a little grossed out at times. We'll see what happens when it comes to putting things in peoples' open wounds, needles in their veins and tubes in their who-has (that's a medical term, didn't you know?).