Update on first two weeks of nursing school

The first two weeks have been a little exhausting, but I think without the stress of everything that has been going on at my JOB lately I wouldn't be so overwhelmed. As it is though, managing both, I'm tired all of the time and in the last couple days have been pounded with a cold that stripped me of any remaining energy I had.

First of all, a word of advice for anyone reading this who is about to start nursing school: Do the first week's reading before school starts. Really. Even if you mostly learn by lecture, and have always done things differently in the past, just take my word for it. You'll be grateful you did.

I however, didn't, am at the end of week 2 and still not caught up. Thankfully I have only one day of class during the coming week and should be able to get my act together during that time.

I have had my first two clinical days now. It was in a long term care facility, and my assigned person to take care of was a very light load. She didn't need much assistance and I understood the health problems she had very well. If anything I think she was over-diagnosed, perhaps for funding reasons to make her able to stay there. They chart to highest level of care at the facility I was assigned to, which makes sense if you are trying to staff and run a place like that. I was struck by how meager the activity offerings are at such a place, which is privately owned but takes a lot of medicare people and is considered a medical facility, comparing it with my work which is mostly private pay and non-medical.

Last night, after my first two days of clinical, I had strange dreams about alien creatures that crawl up your anus and eat your rectum. Also, after having a morning phone call and then falling back asleep, dreamed of going through closets and closets full of someone's decades old hoarded clothing with my sister.

We've had two tests/quizzes so far. The first was about 60 questions, and you had to have 100% to pass it. It was basic math...fractions, decimals, rounding, etc. I caught one mistake on my second go through but it was 100% by the time I turned it in. Without knowing the actual figures, just listening to what my classmates are saying, about 1/3 will have to retake it, and the faculty planned for that. It's all too easy to miss one if your nervous. The second quiz was also on math, but dealt with conversions specifically related to medication. The main thing I didn't know for that was the old system of grains and drams. I studied up, was completely confident before and during the test, but somehow only got an 8/10. I wonder what I did wrong, but as one classmate put it, "it was probably something stupid and not worth our limited time to go back and track down the teacher about it."

Our exam next week is also in the pharmacology/math/medical data class. Between now (Friday afternoon) and the test (Tuesday morning) I'm going to focus mostly on catching up on reading/studying for that class, and some on prepping my research for my next clinical client. Oh, and the whole getting better from this miserable cold thing, I need to spend some time on that too. I'm also scheduled to work Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

Next post, immediately to follow, will be about everything that has been going down at my job.