case study and drugs
Puddles filled every single little nook and crack of the road. Water covered every surface, and moved in little rivers when it overflowed one hole to another one. The rain had to have been happening for a long time, because only when it rained for hours did it get everything wet like this.
As I peddled my bike towards the nursing building, I concentrated on two things: not hitting the deep puddles so hard the water sprayed onto my foot and keeping my sunglasses dry. Sunglasses before the sunrises? Well, it was the only way I could think to keep the water out of my eyes.
Although I gave myself the same amount of time to get ready for clinical in the morning, I somehow managed to arrive at school earlier than normal. That happened to be a good thing however because I had two choices. I could either park my bike by the nursing building and let it sit in the rain for the next two hours. Or I could park my bike under the awning at the library, all the way across campus.
Yet, as I rode up University St., never had I seen so many cars. They filled the street I was on, the street I just turned off of–everywhere! I worked my way up the hill, in fear of one of the cars cruising past me and spraying me with water. Or worse, not letting me turn onto the sidewalk. I couldn’t imagine that so many people had class at 8:00 AM Thursday morning.
Well, they don’t, I realized as I turned onto the sidewalk. An elementary school is up the road. That’s probably the source of all the cars.
For some reason, the rain decided to spite me, for although it rained during the whole short ride to school, it stopped just as I began to walk quickly (I don’t run) across campus. Still, the water was everything, puddling up on the sidewalk and pooling in the grass. Although the temperature was comparatively warm with what it had been–nearly 50º–I was thankful I wore closed-toed shoes or else my feet would have been very wet.
I pushed open the door to the lab classroom, only to find nearly everyone else there. The only seat near the front was one all the way against the wall. After considering squeezing between the rows to put my stuff down, I changed my mind. I still wanted to change into a skirt. (I can’t ride my bike in a skirt after all. It’s too full. But I change as soon as I get to school from what I call my biking pants. They’re really just denim pants though.) i asked a girl to put my stuff on the seat behind her and ran upstairs to change.
After I came downstairs, I squeezed my way between the table and the people, hitting my thigh on the corner of the table in the process. Carefully, I laid out both my wet pants and my wet jacket, hoping they would dry soon. By then, class was just about to start and I discover, much to my dismay, that my clinical group is moving into another room. So I have to gather all my stuff back up and trudge in there. Luckily, I didn’t hit my leg on the table this time.
First, Jessica, my clinical instructor, collects all of our sheets. I had to do a case study yesterday, and turned that in today. (I love the case studies. But with real people, it is harder.) then, we get split up into groups based off of a) our experience and b) who we have been paired with before. Jessica didn’t want to pair is up with someone we had already been with. (Although, based off of that, I dread being paired up with this one woman, though I will not say why yet at least.)
I was paired with Trish and we were asked to find out what her meds were for and what we would teach her. Trish is interesting. I know she’s an immigrate from China and has been here seven years. When speaking in front of a group, she is quiet and almost shy. But when I worked with her one-on-one, she became a bit more confidant and vocal. Not loud or demanding, but willing to ask questions and to talk some and smile. (She doesn’t smile often.)
Yet, when we were going over the drugs, she happened to have the two that dealt with the patient’s congestive heart failure and she struggled to tell us about them.
Now, I, on the other hand, wanted to tell the patient too much almost. Because Jessica told us to educate the patient. I took that to mean that we would be giving a small teaching session. We did not. Instead, we had one group tell us that the patient had congestive heart failure (CHF) and then we reported that the patient would take lasix and something else. Then they said the patient had a stroke, so we reported that she would take coumadin, and she would get the protime test done every month, and she would eat the same amount of vitamin K each day, if she wanted it. (Vitamin K is found in things like salads.) I also wanted to mention the alcohol consumption, because she shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, and that she needed to take only the prescribed dosage of Tylenol, because if she took the large amount of Tylenol, then that would hurt her liver.
Jessica ended with pointing out several things that we need in our interventions on our care plans. We need to be assessing and teaching. She also mentioned two more but those are the big ones.
We tried to take a math quiz after we were done with that, only just as we began the math quiz, these strange voices began talking. I’m seriously, if I thought that ghosts were real, I would have been convinced this place was haunted. It actually distracted me more than much of anything ever had, to the point I couldn’t remember how to do the problem. Then, I could figure out what gm stood for. I knew the mg were milligrams and mcg were micrograms but not gm. I realized half way through that they were grams.
When I left clinical ahead of everyone else, the rain still fell, drenching everything in sight with an overabundance of water.
Tags: case study, clinical, drugs, nursing 101, Trish
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