Clinicals this weekend in many ways restored my desire to be a nurse. I think it had a lot to do with my clinical instructor. She was mean, nice, helpfull . . . you get the picture. She drilled us about our patients, their conditions, and the meds they were on, but at the same time she treated us like adults and allowed us to see many procedures and found opportunities to see procedures, practice skills etc. Sadly, clinical instructors as good as her are hard to come by but on the up note this was the first time in nearly two months that I was excited to be in nursing school.
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On Saturday we were in a community mental health nursing home. That is a fun experience. It is basically a huge cafeteria like room with four resident halls coming off of it. The residents wander around during the day. This is where the fun nursing stories come from. The residents were all very kind and excited to speak to us students and it seemed to really brighten the day of many of them.
My patient on the respiratory floor has a past medical history of . . . well, basically everything including silent aspiration. He came to the hospital thinking he had low BS but a CT confirmed pneumonia most likely due to silent aspiration. He was an older man and his doc placed him on nectar think liquids. This led to the man refusing to eat or drink anything. It was an ordeal trying to explain to him the purpose of the diet and the possible implications of discontinuing the diet (death). After much discussion his doctor came to the room and the patient decided to go off the nectar diet and drink whatever he wants. . . sadly this may be the decision that leads to his death. He was a very kind and patient older gentleman.
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