Night shift

End of week two . . .

This week I did two night shifts on Monday and Tuesday night. They're pretty long shifts, from 9pm till 7:30am so I needed Wednesday to recover. At this stage in the semester I only have to take one patient, but it will increase gradually up to a full load as the weeks go by. One patient on a night shift is very boring! Because there's not much to do between 10:30pm and 6:00am. However, I made good use of time and got heaps of reading for uni done and got a couple of tasks out of the way for my clinical learning portfolio which will be worth 55%.

This week I also finished my job applications for next year. I've already heard back from two of them for an interview in the next couple of weeks. I've applied to four different psychiatric grad nursing programs. It was so hard to narrow it down to just four places, and also choose whether I wanted to do general medical/surgical or psychiatric, or community. In the end I chose psychiatric because it's what I'm most interested in and enjoy doing, I can increase my qualifications during the program, and there are opportunities to work in acute inpatient care, community, teenagers, emergency, drug and alcohol . . . there's a lot of choice within psych so I don't feel as though I'm limiting myself by choosing that path.

Here's a summary of what I've been studying this week:

Lectures
• The impact of chronic conditions
• Promoting comfort_and managing symptoms

Reading
• The social construction of chronicity: a key to understanding chronic care transformations
• Healthcare providers’ perspectives : estimating the impact of chronicity
• Chronicity and complexity: is what’s good for the diseases always good for the patients?
• Clinical Practice Consolidation subject guide
• Ward Orientation
• Journal article case study: An 81 year old man with massive rectal bleeding – this was related to one the patients I had on the ward.
• Journal article: Nurofen Plus misuse, an emerging cause of perforated gastric ulcer – again this is related to a patient on the ward who had been abusing a packet a day of nurofen plus, which is ibuprofen plus codeine. They abuse it for the codeine and you don’t need a prescription to get it. The problem is because it has the ibuprofen it wears away the lining of the stomach over time.
• Assessment of Digestive and Gastrointestinal Function – anatomy of the gastrointestinal tract, chewing and swallowing, gastric function, small intestine function, colonic function, waste products digestion, age related changes in the gastrointestinal system, assessing pain, indigestion, intestinal gas, nausea and vomiting, changes in bowel habits and stool characteristics, physical assessment, foods and medications that alter stool colour, stool tests, breath tests, Australian guidelines for colorectal cancer screening, abdominal ultrasonography, genetics and gastrointestinal disorders.

This week I have two more nightshifts again so I'm going to get as much reading done as I can while I've got the chance.