Clinicals in the Hospital….FINALLY

My second semester was very exciting because we FINALLY got to do clinicals in a real hospital.  I had a fantastic instructor who encouraged learning, did not make you feel like an idiot, was kind and gentle, yet expected nothing less than excellence (or at least that you tried your very best).  No doubt she was called to be a teacher. 

I am honestly having a hard time remembering my first patient in the hospital, but do remember it being the first time that I would have to try and get someone on a bedpan by myself.  In the nursing home, we teamed up a lot to work faster.  But now, we had to learn to manage our time as well.  It took me around an hour to get this poor person on the bedpan, wait for them to finish, and get them off and clean them.  And guess what?? It spilled.  So, now, after making a bed on a bedridden patient, I had to do it all over again.  It was horrible.  I kept thinking, “This is NOT what I signed up to do”.  It was not until later that I truly learned how important it was to know everything from the ground up about skills and how to care for a patient because I would certainly be training, delegating, and evaluating those who were also going to be doing these things.  

I never knew osteoporosis could be this bad…….

So, some memorable moments in the nursing home was when my instructor came in to help us give a bath to a rather rowdy resident.  This older lady could be downright MEAN.  She was confused, and got frustrated easily.  When this happened, she could get quite physical.  Yeah.  So, there we were trying to bathe her when my instructor walked in to lend a hand.  The older lady apparently didn’t like my teacher from the time she saw her, so she pinched her on her butt, and my instructor firmly told her that she could not do that.  The older lady did not take well to that, so she reached up and slapped my instructor.  Really hard.  I really didn’t know what to do.  I mean, I’d never seen anything like this in my life.  I think this was the first slapping I’d witnessed.  My instructor was embarrassed, and probably in some stinging pain too.  She had a pretty good red handprint on her face for the rest of the day.

Another resident that I had was an older British lady who had osteoporosis.  She was so frail and had kyphosis (hump back) really bad.  It looked like she was frozen in a position as if she were bent trying to touch her toes.  It was just horrible.  She cried and cried with pain from the osteoporosis.  When we tried to clean her up, we had to get her beautiful Laura Ashley gown off of her.  She screamed when we tried to take it off because it hurt her to move so much.  She cried out for us to just “cut it off” rather than slip it over her head.  I remember somehow getting it off without having to cut it.  But this left such an impression on me.  I had no idea what a severe case of osteoporosis could be like; such pain and suffering.  I WILL remember to drink milk or take calcium supplements!!

My First Clinical Experience

My first clinical ever was in a local nursing home.  My nursing professor/instructor was an older lady who fussed at pretty much everything.  It just changed as to what she was going to fuss about that day.  It was quite a nerve racking experience.  The thing I remember most was first, the smell of the nursing home.  The other thing was that when I went to take my patient’s blood pressure, which I was sooo proud I had done correctly, in walks my nursing instructor.  DON’T DARE PLACE THE BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF ON ANYTHING WITHOUT A BARRIER!!  –she screamed at me.  What she meant was:  when you place any of your personal items (which happened to be the blood pressure cuff I’d recently purchased as part of my essential nursing kit), make sure to place a paper towel or such down and then lay your item down so it doesn’t collect the germs from that patient and then you take it home with you or transport it to the next patient you visit.  Okay, so that made sense.  But why didn’t she say it the way I explained???  This was simply a taste of what was to come in nursing school.  Great.