BITTERSWEET

Yesterday (Friday) was the last nursing class that I had have this semester which ends the semester of my very first nursing class. It feels great to have completed this class and have it under my belt but at the same time I wish that it hadn't come to an end. I have this wish for several reasons: My lab class is the best and now for the next semester some of us are going to be split up for lab and I really don't want that to happen, our lab professors were the best and I am going to miss them, and most of the time I don't like change and this switch is going to be a big change.

Wednesday was our last day of seminar and we basically reflected on the semester and how far we have come as student nurses. For our lab on Thursday we had a Standard patient experiences with kids. Basically we had kids come in to volunteer for us to be patients and we were able to do our general assessments on them. I loved it! For lab on Friday we had the same thing, except we had adults to do the assessments on.

After our Friday experience we presented gifts to our lab professors for all of their support and encouragement throughout the semester. I think that they really enjoyed that. Tears were shed and then we look lots of pictures so we could always remember our amazing lab group. I'm going to miss this awesome group of people a lot. Even though I will still be able to see them, I'm going to miss being together with this group in lab.

Breakfast and Mr. Built

This week was fantastic. On Thursday our nursing lab group put together a fantastic breakfast potluck at the beginning. Oh my goodness, there was so much food- donuts, bacon, pancakes, stickybuns, monkey bread, fruit, blueberry muffins, orange juice, milk, coffee and lots more. It was just a great day in general, it was sort of laid back because we just practiced our modified assessments for adults and children. I always knew our two professors were cool...but after this lab let me tell you...they are cool. There was lots of laughing and jokes going around this lab period! And then today we got to practice our assessment skills with clinical simulations. This included doing an assessment on a manikin. These things are really cool because they have mechanics in then so that some of them can breath, have a heart beat and pulse, you can take their blood pressure, ect. We were put in groups of 4 and we did assessments on 4 different situations. One was a baby, an woman, a pregnant teen, and and older gentleman (Mr. Built). As we rotated through each manikin our position changed (each student took turns being the nurse, student nurse, observer, or voice of the manikin). I was the nurse when we did the assessment on Mr. Built. It was an eye opening experience even though it was on a manikin. So to sum it all up in two words- GREAT WEEK!

What happened....?

So this week was extremely easy, uneventful, and not busy....very unlike how busy every week has been thus far. what happened...I didn't know what to do with myself. Wednesday we did not have seminar because we were given compensation time for our LEI project. Thursday we had lab and went over the full body assessment of the infant/child. And then Friday we are were given compensation time for our LEI project, so I didn't have class until 1. Besides that I don't have to work this weekend so I am hoping to spend some quality time with my girlfriend. Oh and we got our grades back from our Nursing WWII paper and I rocked it out!!!

Jasonetta....whoa what?

Jasonetta, yeah that's right...funny story actually. Today we had our third practicum...and I passed!!!! (side note- we had to know how to do assessments on 11 different body systems. We went in the room with our partner for the practicum and the professor and picked one of 11 envelopes which held the fate of the assessment we had to show the professor. I ended up getting abdomen which is one of my most favorite assessment to do. So as I was the student nurse my partner was the patient.) Then it was my partner's turn to pick, and she picked the envelope with the breast assessment. So I had to pretend to be a woman so she could do the first part of the assessment and then provide the voice for a manikin with woman features so she could finish the assessment. However, my professor named me Jasonetta for the assessment. When my partner asked me to state my name I said Jason, and the professor was like actually it is Jasonetta.

But huge stress relieved after this practicum was over, mainly because there was so many things to remember. Plus I had about a million other things going on in my life. Late nights studying occurred a lot this week. And that meant large bedtime snacks to keep my brain working. To get a image of this I have provided a picture of one of these times. Lucky Charms- best snack ever! Especially when it's in a huge bowl! Oh and I know the picture is kinda creepy, but don't let it scare you!