Back to school

I am pleased to announce my results for last semester which I found out this morning:

Acute Care 82 A
Clinical Assessment & Decisions 73 B
Medications 64 C

They are pretty much what I was expecting/hoping for. Actually the Medications one is higher than I thought it would be because not only did I find the theory exam difficult, and my skills assessment (nebuliser) was something I hadn't done, but also my team got a very low grade (a fail) for our assignment and I had to fight hard to get it re-marked. Then when they re-marked it it should have been a pass but they added it up wrong and it was still a fail, although a higher fail than before. Very stressful. Anyway I'm just glad I didn't get a D for that subject because a D just looks and feels Disappointing and Depressing. I also passed the drug calculations exam with 100% on my first attempt! Half of the students in the subject did not pass and will get two more chances at it. If they don't get 100% they will fail the subject, and Medications is a pre-requisite for all the subjects in second semester, so they would have to differ/extend their studies. I know those students are stressing big time right now, which is tough because it's just the start of a new semester and we're already getting a lot of new learning thrown at us.

So, I'm feeling pretty chuffed and today I rewarded myself with two new pairs of earrings and two scarves from Sportsgirl. I also did my tax return today and I'm getting a BIG return which will ease my financial stress significantly.

Also, more good news, because of the strong fight and protest by some of the students (including me) against the faculty choosing students for month long clinical placements interstate "at random" because not enough were volunteering, the faculty have changed their policy and now they have told us "no one will be forced to go interstate unless they specifically volunteer to go a certain place". I will find out where my placements are on Friday. There are 2 weeks for Acute Care B, 2 weeks for Community Nursing, and 4 weeks for Mental Health. The interstate/rural places I volunteered for were Canberra and Mornington Peninsula, because I have free accommodation with family in those two places and can take my cat with me, so I hope I get at least one of those. It will be like a little holiday, and change of scene.

This week in Acute Care we have been doing the following skills:
- Taking blood (we practised on a fake arm with fake blood which was really fun, I did it over and over until I was satisfied that I'd done it perfectly, you can do that when it's a fake arm, LOL)
- Doing a blood transfusion

The patient scenario is to do with anaemia, gastric ulcer and diabetes. I started reading up on those topics as well as the blood stuff while I was still on holiday because I didn't get back till Sunday and my first class was 9am on Monday.

What am I going to change about my learning methods this semester from last semester?

Firstly, I'm not going to rely so much on my tutors and the lectures to learn the content. I found that textbooks (from the library) explain how to perform skills a lot better than the teachers at uni. However, it's good to watch them do it but the actual explanation is better in books. Some teachers are a lot better than others and some are a lot worse than others. I can't choose which teachers I have so if I get a bad one, rather than be disappointed and complain, I just need to be more resourceful to learn what I need to know. I need to come to skills lab sessions having ALREADY read up on and watched online videos on how to perform the skills. I can't expect to learn it from scratch in the lab session. Skills labs are my ONLY opportunity to practise clinical skills with a registered nurse present before I go out on clinical placement. So this week I watched a couple of videos on how to take blood both from a real person and from the fake arm, and read up on all the steps, so I felt really prepared when I got there and already feel satisfied that I've got that skill down. Huge difference from last semester when I often felt I didn't know what I was doing.

As for prioritising when things get really busy and overwhelming, all lectures are online and can therefore be viewed and reviewed anytime during the semester. The most important thing for the next 5 weeks will be getting the most out of my lab sessions (skills practise) and making sure I'm on the right track with my assignments. Actually we only have labs in Acute Care and the other two subjects are theory/discussion - there are no new clinical skills.

For assignments I need to ask questions on the online discussion board which the subject co-ordinators will answer, and not rely so much on my own, my classmates' or my tutor's interpretation of how to do the assignment. I also need to use more academic resources (ie. journal articles) in my assignments and perfect my APA referencing style. I might have to go to a workshop or something. Actually I have one of the same tutors this term (one I like) and she offered to look over our first drafts. She said she is very anal about APA referencing so she will hopefully be a good person to help me with that.

This is a long blog post and that's pretty much all I have to say right now so I'll end it here. :-)