Today was our designated day to create a "comprehensive care plan" for any patient on the tele floor. I picked a sweet LOL going in for a mitral valve replacement tomorrow. She let me do a complete workup on her, including history, complete physical exam, patient teaching, nursing diagnoses, et cetera. She said that she was "bored, so why the heck not!?" I love patients like that. You get to learn SO much from them.
I even got to do something helpful for her- I was with her in the Echo lab when her REAL nurse called in- her APTT was over 150, meaning DISCONTINUE THE HEPARIN!!! IN A HURRY! So I did so, and felt, for about a tenth of a second, like a Real Nurse. Then it passed.
We've started learning about EKG interpretation in class, which is totally and completely awesome. I used to be able to only read Very Bad Things, like Torsades des pointes, v-fib, v-tach, and of course, asystole. Now I can read PVCs, a very few kinds of bundle branch blocks (assuming NO other complicating factors), and junctional rhythms. Very Very Cool.
What I DONT understand is one of my fellow students. I asked the professor if I could go hang out in the telemetry room once all my charting was done, and before she could answer, Fellow Student says "WHY would you want to do THAT?"
Me:"Um...because they show you lots of neat things about cardiac rhythms"
FellowStudent: "Who CARES? Its not on the TEST!!!"
It boggles the mind. I want to know, because i DONT KNOW IT. That's actually reason enough for me to want to learn about it, setting aside altogether the fact that I want to work in an ER, and they dont HAVE telemetry techs to read all the monitors down there. Grrr. She has NO curiosity whatsoever. And she's lazy. I wouldn't want her taking care of ME.
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3 comments:
Ugh. My nursing school class had a bunch of those. And they always ask doofy questions that have nothing to do with the lecture.
One of them asked, in our second year, "What exactly is respiration?"
Seriously.
The only thing left to do is to make them think respiration is sweat. :-D
Yeah, there are a couple like that in my class too. I overheard one today saying "I don't need to watch the video for that procedure, I aced that part on the test."
And BTW, the only reason she "aced" that part of the test is because her friend took the test 2 days before her and gave her the questions from the test.
I will smile happily when these types fail.
But neat-o for you learning how to read EKGs! That's next year for me...
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