Practicum day five was a tough one for me.  I took three of the four patients that we had.  The thing I’m having the most trouble with is charting.  Not charting or doing my assessments but doing all the other charting, the goals, the education as it relates to plan of care.  I am still navigating this charting system. It’s very complicated, more so than I thought.  So I have a huge learning curve for me and toward the end of shift it gets stressful with the corrections that my preceptor gives.  I’m sure it wears on her, it would have to. We were there until 8pm on Sunday because of the holes in my charting. And I feel really bad about that.

On a more positive note, I got to see a bedside chest tube insertion. Believe it or not the last time I saw one of those (while not in the emergency room) was 12 years ago and it was for a spontaneous pneumothorax. The patient had dropped most of one of their lungs. As soon as they poked into the pleural space a loud rush of air came out.  It was pretty amazing.  Nothing like that happened this time.

Other than the charting thing I believe the day went well.

I finally finished the clinical case study at 8pm last night and it was due at 11:59.  It was a bit of a bear.  I did not enjoy the experience.  But I have two more projects due before the end of school.  Another pharmacology case study which is due NEXT Monday and some type of application of management  project due.  I have to interview a nurse manager or an assistant nurse manager and then write about it.  I can interview a nurse manager from my job if I want it doesn’t have to be from my clinical site.

My preceptor in an effort to help me gave me an acronym to help with q4 reassessments:  CRAPS

C ardiac

Respiratory

Access

Pain

Skin

+ anything that deviated from the norm in the am assessment.

29 days until Pinning!!