Nursing School week 3/ #10
Oct. 27th, 2012 10:16 amOur first week of clinical for the new rotation! I started in Labor and Delivery (I go to Mental Health next week). It was an unusually quiet week on the L&D floor, but some of us did get to attend births. (More on this at the end of the semester when it won't be date-stamped.) This hospital has an L&D floor with private rooms where the families can go through labor and then deliver the baby. There's a separate high-risk wing (I haven't been down there yet) and 3 operating suites for C-sections (haven't been there yet either). A few hours after the delivery, the mothers & babies move to a different floor where they spend a day or 2 in the hospital before going home. We'll go to that floor 1 of the days next week, but I haven't seen it yet, either. It seems to me like it would be a little awkward to change floors, but I guess this hospital is usually so busy with deliveries that they really can't afford to have some of the rooms taken up by postpartum families. Also, I think it allows the nurses to be more specialized--the nurses on the L&D floor help with the birth and assessment of the baby, and of course with the labor, but they don't really do a lot of baby care or post-partum care.
In lectures this week, we continued learning about antepartal discomforts and just started learning about complications. We'll do more on that next week--everything from preeclampsia (hypertension during pregnancy) to diabetes (whether it develops during the pregnancy or the mother already had it) to blood incompatibilities (an Rh - mother carrying an Rh+ baby needs to get treated so her blood won't become sensitized to the '+' in the baby's blood)....and also things like drug/alcohol use during pregnancy.
In Mental Health, we had our first exam on Thursday and then learned about anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders on Friday. It was a beautifully warm day here, and she let us out early! (Today, Saturday, is gray again. But I don't think we're going to get much of the Frankenstorm, so I can't complain.)
In lectures this week, we continued learning about antepartal discomforts and just started learning about complications. We'll do more on that next week--everything from preeclampsia (hypertension during pregnancy) to diabetes (whether it develops during the pregnancy or the mother already had it) to blood incompatibilities (an Rh - mother carrying an Rh+ baby needs to get treated so her blood won't become sensitized to the '+' in the baby's blood)....and also things like drug/alcohol use during pregnancy.
In Mental Health, we had our first exam on Thursday and then learned about anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders on Friday. It was a beautifully warm day here, and she let us out early! (Today, Saturday, is gray again. But I don't think we're going to get much of the Frankenstorm, so I can't complain.)