Drinking the koolaid...

I joined Facebook.  I'll probably use it to see what the large portion of my friends who aren't on LJ are up to....not too sure how often I'll post yet!  If you're so inclined, feel free to send me a friend request.  I'm trying to add friends slowly on my end, and have started more local (geographically).  But that doesn't mean I'm not interested in everyone else--I just needed a way to start out!

Nursing School week 3 coming soon; first, homework!

Nursing school week 3

I'm sure no one saw this coming, but keeping up with Facebook took more time than I expected today!  Goodness!  So, I'll try to keep this short-ish.

We had our first exam in our Nursing class this week.  I did well, but I'm sure the exams will get harder!  Then we immediately started learning about Nursing Process, which is really the meat of everything we'll be doing--it's a specific way of thinking and approaching the patient that directs how the nurse responds. 

First, two statements:  "Medicine studies and diagnoses the disease."  "Nursing studies the patient and diagnoses the patient's response to the disease."

For 'disease', fill in "condition," "injury," "mental illness," etc as necessary.  For 'patient's response' fill in "physiological symptoms," "psychological symptoms," "risk of physiological/psychological symptoms".

So, in very brief terms, a medical diagnosis might be "the patient has a broken leg."  The nurse, using Nursing Process, would first Assess the patient (pain? pressure ulcers (bedsores) from not moving? psychological distress? difficulty caring for him/herself?).  Then the nurse would Diagnose the patient:  Pain.  Impaired Skin Integrity (hopefully not...pressure ulcers are a huge problem and we've already learned a lot of techniques to try to prevent them).  Risk for Impaired Self-Image.  Self-Care Deficit.  The nurse then uses these diagnoses to come up with a plan (involving the rest of the care team).  The plan is based on specific, desired outcomes (like, "By 1500 hrs, the patient will feel less pain."  "By 09/15/2011, the patient will ambulate with assistance.").  The outcome informs the plan (like, "Assist patient with range-of-motion exercises as per Physical Therapists's instructions" or "give pain medication as requested as per MD's prescription").  Then the nurse actually carries out the plan (Implementation phase) and then finally Evaluates the outcomes and re-assesses what is needed next.

Obviously, we're just getting going with this.  We're beginning to learn assessment skills and starting to understand how they fit into a diagnosis.  We haven't gotten to the Plan/Implement/Evaluate phase yet, and of course we don't know very many treatments ("interventions") yet anyway!  Also (if this sounds a little over-involved) the focus of the class is "Medical/Surgical Nursing"--ie: patients who are in the hospital because they are seriously ill or are recovering from surgery.  I doubt that the nurse at my physician's office goes through such a process every time someone comes in for a routine vaccination, for example!

In our lab class, we learned to take vital signs, and I passed my "Patient Transfer Techniques" skill validation.  I was glad of the long weekend, as it gave me a chance to do all the Nursing Process reading (a lot!) and also spend some time doing stuff around the house.