Sick

Sorry for the lack of blog updates. Last week I only had to go into uni for one day. We did a clinical simulation session with a dummy to 'prepare us for clinical' but I'm pretty sure the main purpose was to participate in research study on 'whether clinical simulation actually helps prepare students for clinical placements' that one of our teachers is doing. In my opinion it does not, because it is unrealistic, there is no RN and it's just 5 or 6 students fussing around a dummy with not much idea whether they're doing the right thing. Clinical placement is nothing like that of course.

A week ago I did my first paid nursing shift as a PCA (patient care assistant)! I got called at 5:45am and had to be there at 7am. It was an aged care nursing home and my job was to get the patient's up, dressed and showered and take them to breakfast. Quite a few of them had dementia, urinary and bowel incontinence, or ataxia (unbalanced). So I had to change their nappies, give full assistance with showering and dressing and remind them where they are and what's going on. It was great experience and the other staff were very nice to me. And I got paid! I had another interview for another agency last week as well and got accepted so hopefully that will lead to more work and more variety of experience.

The last two days have been orientation to our wards for clinical placement. We had to do one patient assessment and figure out everything that's going on with them and put together a care plan. I've been studying a lot of new things to do with neurological assessment and diseases and will do some blog posts about them later. I'm really looking forward to getting started on the placement but unfortunately right now I'm sick so today I didn't go in for my shift and I'm going to stay home tomorrow as well. Hopefully I'll be good to go on Friday. I am usually very resilient to coughs and colds that go round, especially in the last three years I've been getting adequate sleep and taking vitamins. However, over the weekend I came into contact with a couple of people that had a very nasty cough and unfortunately I seem to have picked it up. If I have been affected by it, it must be very contagious, so the last thing I would want is to give it to the patients or other students. My clinical coordinator will try to slot me into some other shifts, maybe weekend shifts, in the next three weeks to make up the hours. Just resting, drinking hot tea with honey and lemon, and trying to get a bit of study done, although it's hard to find the mental energy. I've worked a bit on two different assessments in the last 24 so I'm happy with that, but my main focus is getting better.