dear diary...
Dear diary (excerpts from my clinical journal)

November 25, 2010 -- In nursing school, the most valuable part of the process we undergo is the clinical rotations.

The clinicals are where the rubber meets the road. Here, we work with live patients in local hospitals. Each semester, we are assigned to a different type of nursing unit so that by the end of the program we have had a taste of med-surg (the most important), peds, SNF, ICU, oncology, emergency, psych, telemetry, a community clinic, and perhaps others. These are fascinating, difficult, and stressful. Some of us kept journals. I did. Here are my writings.

2/18/2010, Kaiser, med-surg, Santa Clara: At the same time exhilarating and challenging is the access granted by nursing work. In ordinary human interactions, there isn't permission to poke and pry... More

2/23/2010, Kaiser, med-surg, Santa Clara: Infection transmission precautions are driving me nuts. Those bacteria have us whipped... More

3/3/2010, Kaiser, med-surg, Santa Clara: I remember distinctly a comment made by one of my clinical instructors from the first time I went to nursing school about four years ago. She observed that I was having difficulty finding my "rhythm"... More

3/17/2010, Kaiser, med-surg, Santa Clara: Nursing education is focused on the hospital setting with its enormous resources and fine-tuned protocols. What about nursing in other environments? ... More

7/8/2010, O'Conner Hospital, monitored (telemetry) med-surg unit, San Jose: Listening is a challenge. I could not hear 9121's heart!... More

7/17/2010, O'Conner Hospital, monitored (telemetry) med-surg unit, San Jose: Still have occasional moments of, "OMG what (of the hunded possible tasks) should I do next?" but they last only five seconds... More

8/23/2010, Veteran's Administration Hospitals, Palo Alto and Menlo Park: After all the flack in the press about the sorry state of affairs at Walter Reed hospital and the right-wing excoriations of our government's purported neglect of our brave men and women formerly in uniform (i.e. veterans) it was eye-opening to see how well, in fact, they are cared for... More

8/30/2010, Veteran's Administration Hospital, Menlo Park: I'll be blunt: the time doesn't feel very productive... More

12/13/2010, Veteran's Administration Hospital, Menlo Park: A couple of brief but illuminating patient interactions have given me pause. In the first, Mr. F., one of the more belligerent and combative patients... More

9/29/2010, Veteran's Administration Hospital, Menlo Park: On a personal note, at the risk of appearing unprofessional, I'd like to add that I felt at least a twinge of disappointment at my inability to "connect" with this patient... More

11/25/2010, Emergency Dep't, Kaiser, South San Francisco: Nursing is, of course, about people. As a student on this rotation I had the luxury of being able to take time to listen... More

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