Week before placement

Yesterday I went to uni for a pre-clinical workshop and I turned up on the wrong day - oops! Luckily I didn't miss out, it was actually today. Today's workshop was only two hours but Friday's will be eight hours. We didn't really cover that much today. In the last couple of days I have been reading up on acute care skills. This is what I've covered and summarised in my notebook. I might put some of the more interesting summaries on my blog later on.

Preparing the Patient for Surgery:
• Deep Vein Thrombosis Prevention
• Preoperative Assessment
• Preoperative Teaching
• Physical Preparation for Surgery
Caring for the Postoperative Patient
• Immediate Post-anaesthesia phase
• Post Op orders
• Drainage
• Steps before discharge
Surgical Wound Care
• Cleansing a drain site
• Monitoring and emptying drainage devices
• Types of drainage devices
• Removing drains
• Removing staples, sutures and applying steri-strips

After I got home today I went grocery shopping and then did a huge load of laundry sorting and ironing. I watched The Duchess while I did that - great movie. Keira Knightley is so elegant and was very good in the role.

Last night I watched Anatomy for Beginners on SBS. This show is like a horror movie! Each week they disect a dead human body. The one this week had only died very recently so the body was still quite fresh with blood in it. One by one the organs in the abdominal and thorasic cavities were located and taken out. The most disturbing thing I thought about this show is that the anatomist, Professor von Hagens was wearing a wide brimmed black felt hat, had a strong German accent and seemed quite gleeful during the whole process. I don't understand why he needed to use a knife that was about a metre long (looked like a sword to me) to cut the heart in half. It's all a bit serial killerish. Nevertheless I will most probably watch the next two episodes in this series anyway. These shows really help to consolidate my anatomy knowledge because I think I learn and remember a lot more when I see something audiovisually, rather than just reading.