In medical circles, I’m what many people would call a Black Cloud. A Black Cloud is someone whose mere presence in the hospital seems to tempt the fates and every seriously ill patient in three counties to show up in the Emergency Department. To be a black cloud is an inconsistent fortune. There were days when I would be slammed with admissions. Other nights, there would be no admissions, but I would spend the whole night at one patient’s bedside, doing everything in my power to keep that one person alive. Forget sleep – being able to sit down was blessing enough.
“It’s good to be a Black Cloud,” my senior residents would tell me, adding, “Black Clouds are the ones who learn the most.”
I’d like to tell you about a day in my life, which I
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The patient’s lab results started to result, and an increasingly ominous picture was being painted – again, problems that I had little idea of how to fix. The nurses were my saviors. When I didn’t know what to do, they got me there by saying things like, “Have you thought about using x?” I worked until 8:30; until a result came back that was so alarming that I needed to call for help again. I called the night resident – the one I was supposed to sign out to at 7PM.
“What are you still doing here? You were supposed to sign out 90 minutes ago?” he said. I did my best to explain the situation. He came up, took the information, and told me to finish so that I could sign out and go home. I worked for about 20 more minutes, signed out, and left. I cried in my car – mostly out of sheer exhaustion, but also out of frustration. In my entire life, I had never felt so incompetent.
Not five minutes after trudging into my apartment, my white coat, hanging on the back of a kitchen chair, began to blare, and I stood in my apartment, with fresh tears now streaming down my face. In my haste to escape the hospital, I forgot to give the pagers to the senior resident. I called him to let him know, and then took the whole damned coat, pagers and all, and put it in my car without a second
In the beginning of fall of 2016, I got a job as a medical assistant. It’s long process to get this sort of job, at least with the University of Utah so when I finally went through the orientation, lab training, computer training, and community clinics I got to work and realized there was, even more, training. Every clinic has its personal preferences and rules, so I had to start from scratch with the training I already had. As soon as I got therenoticeI was a given a quick tour of the clinic and given all the rules, passwords and regulations. It was already too much to handle, but I was memorizing as much as I could. I can’t always function under pressure, but I tried not to let my nerves get to me.
It was intimidating and a bit scary, but instinctively I tried to help the patient and his family in any manner I could. As the day progressed, I had less anxiety when administering medications to the patient, and I felt more at ease with checking on the patient and his family to ensure they had no unmet needs. Because of our initial encounter with the doorway assessment, providing patient care was not as frightening as past first days of clinical have been. This resulted in a quite interesting post clinical conference where every student had something interesting to discuss regarding the patients they cared
Besides being showcased to the public as a medical rarity by her physician, patient L faced a multitude of other various problems with the Sutter Davis staff. When she first arrived to the hospital, the woman working at the front desk greeted her poorly. Patient L was told by the woman that “’[she] had to wait her turn,’ even though nobody else was there.” In the middle of filling out some medical paperwork, a young child and his mother walked into the hospital about ten minutes after patient L did. Within minutes of walking in, the two of them were called upon to see a doctor. The two of them were helped before patient L was, despite the fact that she showed up long before them and was already waiting fifteen agonizing minutes with no one else ahead of
Once I had finished some computer work, which was the last part of my training, I reported to the night time shift manager to confirm with them that I was indeed done with training. They gave me a pat on the back and told me to get to work right away. Instead of going home at ten at night as I had planned, I didn’t return home until about five in the morning. I g...
Furthermore, there should be enough trust between the nurses and physicians where they can easily put aside their egos and ask for a second opinion when they have any doubts concerning a patient's safety. This was clearly exemplified when the nursing staff attending to Lewis Blackman failed to contact the physician when various side effects arose; instead they tailored the signs to fit the expected side effects. Even after Blackman’s health was deteriorating, the nurses remained in their “tribes” and never once broke out of it to ask for help. The entire hospital was built on strong culture of remaining in their tribes instead of having goals oriented towards patients care and safety.
Thirty minutes before evening shift change and you receive the call. A new admission is in route to your facility. The patient is reported to be of high acuity, requires intravenous antibiotics, and has a diagnosis of chronic pain. In some health care settings this would be considered a typical new patient admission. However, for rural long-term care facilities there is potential for considerable complications. In a setting where registered nurses are only required to be in the facility eight hours within a twenty-four hour time frame, significant complications can arise during admissions that require certain specialty care specific to the RN. Ineffective discharge planning between any health care settings can be detrimental to patient care.
I followed the RN nurse who was to assist and prep the operating room (OR). She first went into the clean utility room, where she picked up essentials for the surgery. When everything was gathered and prepared, we had to sit and wait for the patient who had arrived late. The RN would check the computer constantly to see if the patient was on file. After the clock hit 9, which was the time for the surgery, the RN nurse decided to go help put the patient on file quicker. When we arrived at the patients room, there was a nurse making the patient fill out papers. The RN nurse took over the papers while the other nurse completed the documents on the computer. While watching all the questions being asked, and the time it took to fill out the paper work, I realized that the paper work process is not easy.
Complex care of patients provides the nurse with a myriad of decisions to be made-however, it must be remembered that although the
Paramedics squeeze my arms, staining their gloves a deep red. Doctors and nurses scream at each other as they run across the hallways wheeling me into the operating theatre. I look over to my wrists as clear fluids begin their journey into my veins. My heart is in my throat, my pulse is echoing throughout the room, my limbs are quivering, and my lungs are screaming. Nurses force plastic tubes up my nose, as jets of cold air enter my sinuses, giving me relief. Inkblots dance before my eyes like a symphony of lights. A sudden sleepiness overcomes me and slowly my vision dims.
Decision making in RN’s practice starts with the beginning of a nurse’s day. The nurse must prioritize which patient to access first and which patient to administer medications first, especially in light of upcoming surgeries and procedures. The nurse must also consider patient’s current blood and other test results in order to decide whether it might be necessary to contact the healthcare provider and report any abnormalities. Since the nurse is the person that is the most with the patient during his hospital stay, she is the one that is the most familiar with that patient and his condition. Therefore even a subtle change she notices in her patient’s condition on assessment, can lead to change of treatment which in some cases might save that patient’s life or greatly contribute to the positive o...
Before my shift started, I did my research about my new client for week three clinical. I thought I was well prepared for the clinical, I knew the client’s mental and medical conditions but I was more focused on the client’s mental health issues and not the medical illnesses. When the nurse informed me that client W was experiencing shortness of breath due to his COPD, I was a bit shock because I was not expecting that to happen.
I was quivering as I sat on the pristinely white sheeted gurney. I had no idea what to expect. Ami sat in a plastic, maroon chair over in the corner and looked at the cold, disinfected, tile floor. The sounds of beeping machines and ticking clock flooded my ears. The nurse knocked on the door and both Ami and I jumped. She handed me a clipboard with some paperwork on it that asked for the basics: name, date of birth, reason for being here, consent to treat, and so on and so forth. I filled it all out the best I could, my mind was lost in another galaxy. Besides, how was I supposed to know what year my father was born in and the phone number to my mother’s work? Once I finished, the nurse took the clipboard and exited the room once again.
This narrative will be analyzed using relevant concepts from the literature. Narrative My experience happened when I was in my second year of nursing. We are just starting our clinical rotations at KGH. At that time, our instructors assigned us one patient to do our nursing care. The goals for the day are to do our head to toe assessments and be able to chart our findings.
The first time my sister brought her boyfriend home, I showered her bedroom with filthy, smelly clothes, including her undergarments. Imagine her surprise when she opened her door and laid eyes upon her own dirty laundry. I knew she’d be mad, what I didn’t know was that she would react like a teased bull chasing a red cape. She charged at me like I was a vault in the Olympics, and she was one point away from the gold. Suddenly out of nowhere came a broom handle to my abdomen. Broom abuse or not, I couldn’t stop laughing.
Cracking my eyes open, I noticed that I was lying in a bed in a hospital room with an IV in each arm. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon and I saw the sunlight streaming through the window in my room. I had just gotten out of almost three hours of surgery. My mom was leaning over me, asking me if I was all right, but my mouth was so swollen and numb that I couldn’t talk. Dr. Keller came in to talk to us and explained that my surgery went very well. After that, I stayed at the hospital for about a week before finally going home.