Gotta Get Through This...

clinical today left me flustered.

My last two patients haven't had many issues (ok-one had issues). What I really mean is that my last two patients weren't heavy with tubes or meds.

this poor person had 3 or 4 meds this morning. Which I know is not a lot. but for me, I struggled. I couldn't answer questions today (a DO was asking me, why are we giving NaCL bolus? what does the stomach produce?....swear to you, I couldn't say what the stomach produced. I kept thinking, "cholr...cholr...cholrid....?? damn HCl Acid). The entire day I was 'off.'

It started with blowing a vial of nexium...honestly. the needle popped off the syrine and the vial poured out onto the counter.

Even my instructor said to me, "Relax. take a deep breath. I'm not mad. Do I look mad? I'm not mad. Now, tomorrow if you don't know this, then I'll be mad."

Great.

Here's a list of things I learned today in clinical (out of order):

1. how to send orders to the pharmacy for missing doses. Or for wasting a vial of nexium.
2. dilaudid. inject over 2mg over 2-3 minutes. so if patient gets 1 mg, push over one minute.
3. how to give lovenox.
4. how to give meds IV push (although still not 100% on this, even though I know it's ridiculously easy)
5. those needless syringe systems? there is an extra cap on there that I didn't know about and I spent quite a few minutes trying to screw the syringe into the IV port before instructor told me that the cap was still on.
6. draining and measuring NG tube suction stuff. not sure what exactly that is called (output), but it reeked. oh my goodness did it reek.
7. the nurse actually flushed the NG tube for me. Hopefully I will do it tomorrow.
8. fetanyl patches
9. that I'm not sure what I'm doing there.
10. and I learned that I'm 1/2 way done with this semester's clinical. 5 more days!