The day that almost wasn't :: N30020 Clinical Journal Entry #17

Last night, I decided I wasn't going to clinical today.  I didn't feel like it, and I had better things to do.  I turned off my alarm and stayed up extremely late.

Then, thanks to my seriously freakishly accurate internal clock, I woke up at 5am, wide awake and peppy.  I felt guilty about being up so early and not going to school, and then I figured if I felt so well, I definitely needed to take advantage of it and go to clinical.  So I threw my things together, put on my seriously way-too-white nursing student uniform, and drove an hour to the Clinic.

Within no time, I remembered how much I hate this rotation.

Our instructor - God forbid she be reading this - is so sweet, but well, I think "passive" is a great word to describe her.  Every single day so far, she has paired two of us to one patient.  Seriously.  Even in our first clinical ever, we got our own patients!  And our unit is terrible.  The nurses are awesome, but the cases are way boring.  The few interesting cases are conveniently skipped by our instructor.  She likes "easy" patients, probably because it makes her day easier, and so she gives us the "non-learning-experience" patients who are on few to no meds, awaiting discharge, really independent, and all of the above.  Another student and I needed to be fingerprinted to get into the med system, and our instructor kept saying, "Well the lady hasn't called me back yet."  Umm, how about calling her again then?  No, that would be too out-of-her-way.  So we just now today got fingerprinted so we can pass meds.  As if passing oral prednisone is fun or something.  I thought we're here to learn, not be dumbed down to our instructor's comfort level.  I understand her license is at stake, but she is also there to teach, to choose stimulating patients, to give each of us our own patient. (Other instructors have been known to give their students two patients each.)

So we do pre-conference and another girl and I get a 17 year old in for a Crohn's disease flare.  He'd been in for a couple weeks, and two students had him last week.  He seriously just wanted to take a nap today and wait to be discharged.  We did vitals, an assessment, and passed 1 IV push med and a few orals.  Other than that, we walked around begging other nurses for things to do.  Well, not we.  The girl I was paired with kept disappearing from the floor and then lying about it.  "I was in this room the entire time!"  Umm, actually, I looked in there four times for you and you were not there until right this second.  But she's been known to lie and disappear.  Thanks.

So do you know what I did today, when I wanted desperately to be learning?  I made friends with Housekeeping and helped them make beds for the new admits.  I emptied the trash.  (And you should have seen their faces when they saw a student was wanting to help with things like that.)  I helped with a few new admits.  It was totally uneventful, super boring, and entirely a waste of learning time.  If it weren't for me showing love to my patients, I would say these days are a waste of my time.  I try to think of what I'm learning, but other than learning things from my patients, but I honestly can't think of anything.  I knew how to give oral meds last semester.  Okay, so I learned a few IV things, but not like I had fingerprints to do it myself or anything.

Yeah so fast forward to the fingerprinting at 11am.  I was so nauseous and was getting a migraine.  My care plan was entirely done, and our patient needed nothing, and no one else needed help.  I wanted to go to bed so badly, and my neck was hurting, and thanks to some unknown issue I've been having lately, I was dizzy.  So I told my instructor I was going home after I got fingerprinted.

Whoaaaaa.... stop right there.  "Why?  What's wrong?"  "I feel like I'm going to vomit," I said very matter-of-factly.  I knew I wasn't going to since I only throw up when I get the stomach flu every January, but still, I did feel like I was going to.  "Oh wow, you need to go home then.  Okay, well, let's see.  You were going to pass afternoon meds after you got your fingerprinting.  Hmm, I'm going to have to cancel your alternate experience day then so you can get more med experience."  Excuse me?  Cancel my "get-out-of-jail-free," "you-get-to-leave-the-floor-for-an-entire-day" opportunity??  Plus honestly, I'm just very excited to go to outpatient pediatric oncology.  That was not going to work.  "Well even a half day?  I'm going to go to the SIM lab on Monday."  "Well I'll think about it."

I decided I better get fingerprinted, eat something to feel a little less dizzy, and become "unsick."

And I did just that.

Because God forbid I miss what might be the only good day of this clinical rotation.

I love peds, I love the kiddos, I just want to learn.  I don't want to share patients when we have exactly enough patients on the floor and we're at a higher level clinical and should be learning to manage a bigger load.  I'm sick of getting patients who just need oral meds, don't need any cool nursing things done, just need vitals, assessment, and a little charting.  But as I said, my instructor is very passive, and honestly, I think she is just comfortable not being responsible for much.  My personality is the complete opposite of hers.  Oh, and I hate, absolutely hate, to be bored - especially when I know I could be learning.

I know I'm ranting and venting and going on and on, but this is just so frustrating to me.  Thankfully, we only have 3 more weeks of this and then I go to OB nursing.  I hope watching fetal monitors all day is less boring than standing perched in the middle of the hallway, analyzing every move of everyone to jump on any chance to just do anything.

Physically, this is extremely, entirely taxing (umm, end-stage liver disease, fibromyalgia, sleep disorder, immunocompromised, anxiety... + 10 hours shifts + 1+ hr drive each way), and I have no idea why I thought this going back to school thing was a good idea.  Then pair that with my less-than-ideal clinical situation, oh yes, and the awful medications I'm taking to help me even get through this... and I'm just going crazy right now.  I think I used to like nursing, and I think I still do, but it's just hard when an instructor - of all people - is all but purposely taking new experiences away from us.

At least I got an A on my exam.  It kind of stinks that I don't get to actually practice all this great new knowledge I have.

I hope I'm not being unreasonable or being "too good" for this or being so caught up on the bad stuff that I just entirely miss opportunities, but I really, really think I'm dying to learn and this current situation just isn't conducive to it.  Maybe it's as simple as that.