National Coffee Day 2014: 10 Places Where You Can Get A Free Cup Of Coffee.
Happy National Coffee Day! To be completely honest, I had no idea the day was today (Oh the shame!).
As many nurses know, nursing students cannot get by without a few drops of coffee every day. I find it coincidental that this holiday lands on a Monday, the day classes resume…
The phrase “Every cloud has a silver lining” has never been so prevalent to my life. My main concern these last few weeks of school has been my clinical advisor. I wrote previously about the difficulty of working with her, but over time I used her exasperating nature to my advantage. She challenged me to beat the learning curve that loomed over all of us the first couple of weeks of classes.
Our course on obstetrics is intermingled with end-of-life transitions and only meets once a week for two hours. Needless to say, it was a slow start to our experiential learning. My clinical faculty, however, emailed a list of knowledge points in response to the weekly goal she insists we send. The list guided my self-learning and by the second week I actually felt prepared for clinical.
I was more than a little annoyed to find out that my advisor had merely meant the list to be a suggestion of things to look up prior to our clinical day, but by then I had the respect of several nurses on the L & D floor for what I knew. The next few weeks were awesome! I continued to improve my technical practice and I was able to engage with the nurses I shadowed by asking more specific questions about pregnancy and the labor processes.
In the end, I was able to participate in both a vaginal and cesarean birth and cared for several laboring patients and newborn infants. It was a wonderful experience being in L & D, but I am grateful for the opportunity to work with postpartum patients next.
My mom, while excited it is my last year of college, still cried at saying goodbye.
I am currently heading into my third week of my last year of nursing school! To say that the last few weeks have been interesting is an understatement. It almost seems as though we started off at a jog and are now at full speed.
My clinical rotation for the first half of the semester is split between the labor and delivery unit and postpartum care unit. I have not had the opportunity to observe a delivery, but I have learned newborn and postpartum assessments as well as how to teach mothers how to breastfeed. Not super exciting stuff, but it is all part of the learning experience.
Also part of the learning experience is my clinical advisor. Unfortunately my advisor is not familiar with obstetrics nor has very good organizational skills. The learning curve for me this rotation is steep. My advisor is expecting me to know and understand far more than what has been taught to us in the two classes covering pregnancy. While it is frustrating, I am trying to view this as an opportunity to take charge of my learning and be prepared for anything.
Despite all the stress and frustrations I have met with, I have enjoyed having a little more time for myself. I am definitely adjusted to the flow of nursing school; I know when and how to study most effectively as well as when to relax and watch Pretty Little Liars (my guilty pleasure). I look forward to meeting more challenges in the future, but I also hope there are not more than are necessary…
Bubble tea, my other guilty pleasure.
Yes, I am participating in the Cascade AIDS Project (CAP) annual AIDS Walk. This year, however, I walking as a member of the Linfield team.
Last year I volunteered at the AIDS Walk as a way to integrate myself into the greater Portland community (as well as familiarize myself with my surroundings) and found myself being welcomed into a wonderful community of people who also care about the health and well-being of others. Now that I have succeeded in both joining the Portland community and in making Portland my home away from home, I want contribute more to CAP.
By participating directly in the AIDS Walk, I am helping raise funds for an organization that directly affects the health of many people in the Portland area. CAP has multiple programs that help with sheltering, training, educating, and supporting those affected by HIV/AIDS. Without the help of organizations like CAP, healthcare providers would have much more to worry about.
As a future healthcare provider, I want to be involved in responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. My hope is that you will support me and the Cascade Aids Project in our efforts to serve those with HIV and AIDS. Please consider making a donation on my behalf and help me reach my fundraising goal of $200. In addition, please pray for all those affected by HIV/AIDS.
For more information about Cascade AIDS Project, please visit www.cascadeaids.org.
To make a donation on my behalf, please visit aidswalkportland.org/livfragoso.
Recently I have been considering my role in the family. As is usually that case, my plans for the summer fell through and I am left in the sometimes overwhelming company of my family. I feel under-appreciated and whether or not I am does not matter. The fact that I feel that way is impeding in my ability to fulfill whatever my role is.
Here is the situation: I have no job nor means of transportation, apart from unreliable public transportation. I spend most of my time with my brother, second only to my mother. I try to do whatever helps my brother including reading to him, encouraging him to write/draw, and wrestling him. I help Ma with whatever needs to be done around the house. Helping my sister is more sporadic and broad-ranged. With only two cars between the three of us, working out a schedule for the day (nevertheless the week) can be difficult. While I admit there is much more I could be doing for them, I constantly find myself conflicted between spending most of my time doing things for them and spending time on myself. I do not necessarily mean that the time spent should be on self-care but rather activities that benefit me in other ways – academically, socially, and professionally. For instance, I mentioned that I am taking online courses through the public library and recently I have not had the time nor the energy to complete a lesson.
I know there is a line between hard work and being taken advantage of, humility and servitude. I want to be humble, but I cannot help but constantly feel irritated that everyone seems to be living their own life without taking mine into consideration. I would like to be able to spend my time the way I would like to, without feeling obligated to work for others. At this point, there’s not much I can do about my family other than make my feelings known. Hopefully they will understand and work with me.
As a nursing student, we have been told repeatedly that we may tire of our jobs and want to quit. Some nurses have told me that as time progresses, the novelty of the job wears off and weariness sets in when they realize most people do not appreciate nurses as much as they expect. It is with this in mind that I want to differentiate between humility within a job and flat out servitude sooner rather than later. I hope that in the rest of my career as a nursing student I will not be pushed to the point that I am at with my family, however, I wish to prepare myself for it if it does.
At the moment I am doing my mental health rotation in which I work with patients with behavioral disorders. I am thoroughly enjoying the experience and can picture myself working in mental health in the future.
Some thing I noticed recently is of nurses’ expectations for the patients. Our S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable, Timely) goals are a bit different from other nursing areas. For instance, one might be for the patient to only rely on PRN anxiolitics only six days out of seven and instead utilize coping strategies for one day to reduce agitation. For some behavioral patients, that is a tall order. For others, that is an attainable goal.
Our job as mental health nurses is not to diagnose patients. Our job is to treat and help manage the treatment of our patients, especially because in this area, many cannot do so themselves. For example, for someone with ulcerative colitis who also suffers from bipolar disorder, sticking to a safe nutritional diet can be challenging if not near impossible for those that cope through eating. Nurses must help manage the ulcerative colitis exacerbations as well as the bipolar disorder.
That being said, mental health nurses have to be far more observant in changes in patients’ behaviors than nurses in other areas of healthcare. What seems like laziness and sitting around is actually persistent monitoring of patients and charting their behavior in a subjective, non-judgmental manner.
For an example of how difficult this type of writing can be, take a moment to look at a person nearby and describe them without using words such as “cool,” “nice,” and “cute.” Post your observations in the comments below. It is can be a very arduous task if one is describing multiple patients with similar behaviors.
My point being, each patient is an individual and one is most reminded of that in behavioral health.
As I type this, I am lying on my bed contemplating whether I want to start writing this or whether I want to sleep instead. The thing is, if I went to sleep right now, it would be the earliest I have been to sleep since returning to school. This is not to say that we have been deluged with homework (though we have) but we have been given copious amounts of reading to accomplish and study from.
Not to mention, this weekend will be the second weekend in a row I have left campus for other plans. This means that I have had to complete three extra days worth of studying to prepare for a lack of studying part of tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, and part of Monday. The point being that I have been pretty busy lately.
If I am not asleep, in the library, or in class one can assume I am most certainly dead.
That being said, I am enjoying my mental health and pharmacology courses immensely. I also happen to be taking a course on medical anthropology which is fascinating and a course on Spanish healthcare terminology which is very useful. My chronic conditions course is alright so far and I have no complaints about labs.
As much as I complain about not having a social life because of all the studying I have been doing, I am really having a good time. I love taking the streetcar to the library and reading before bed again. I am looking forward to more family time this weekend, this time to celebrate my cousins’ confirmation and my birthday. Following along with my sea side metaphor, the waves of joy and gratitude have increased in frequency as of late and I welcome them with bated breath.
I will make no blanket statements about the last year other than it was a year of learning. I learned more about myself this year than I can remember any year before that.
In January, I applied to nursing school and spent the month taking care of my post-surgical father. I started on the AFI films list and revamped the existing List. Fast forward to May – I finished my sophomore year of college and packed up my things for the last time in McMinnville. It was bittersweet, saying goodbye to the campus and people that made so many wonderful memories, while also looking forward to my future in Portland. I also celebrated the graduation of my beautiful sister!
In June, I traveled to Mexico with my family and spent a week relaxing and recouping from a rough school year. July flew by and left me dazed and confused, scrambling to get things together for the first week of school in August.
Adjusting to nursing school and Portland took most of my September and October, but I successfully completed my first 5k in November. The transition from November to December was rough, what with all the academic events occurring and the process of packing for two months home.
The last week of December was fantastic. Christmas with the family was wonderful, as usual, and New Years Eve, despite a couple mishaps, was fantastic. As ever, I am grateful for the experiences that have led me to this point in my life. I look forward to the year ahead and, as always, I wonder what it has in store for me.
It finally hit me. I have only two and a half more weeks of my first semester of nursing school. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!?!
I have four papers to complete and one project to present before I have to execute my final performance evaluation in high fidelity simulation and take the HESI (Health Education System Inc.) exam – all before Finals Week.
That being said, I apologize for any late blogposts or poorly written/edited blogposts. I am doing some major self-care this weekend and I hope to have the energy to blog about it all, but I am also going to be very, very, very busy. Evidence A: my bed right now.
I made a friend today at clinical! Unfortunately my friend suffers from severe dementia.
Many of my interactions with my friend prior to today were brief and tense. I had heard that my friend liked to twist arms, bite, and lick and the thought of a person like that kind of made me nervous. Today however, I was in a strange mood because of the death of a patient I had worked with and my friend must have picked up on that. My friend clung to me all night and kept telling me that I was loved and how special I was.
Although my friend’s speech pattern was very strange, I immediately picked up on things by the way it was said. Our communication kind of reminded me of how I interpreted my brother’s speech when we were younger. I know that seems awful comparing my brother to a person with dementia, but bear with me.
Saul, my brother, used to talk in a roundabout way. Getting from one point to the next was a journey, but not always a linear one. To get from A to B, he might skip to H or P before implying B. He did not speak in word salad (unintelligible mixture of words and phrases) like my friend, but it was sometimes hard to tell what Saul was actually talking about.
Over the years, Saul has developed in so many ways and I have honed my skill of interpretation. It may be the fact that I am his sister, but most often I know exactly what he means when he says something unclear to others. Whatever the case may be, my friend today reminded me of one of the many reasons I love and miss my brother. I am now going to try and get over my homesickness with – you guessed it – sleep.
Liv 'n Learn 