Last day of clinicals

Today was my very last day of my 185 hours of preceptorship and marks the end to nursing school!

It's interesting because I started off my rotation with my preceptor being floated to a stepdown unit and today, I ended the rotation being floated to an oncology medsurg floor. I'm definitely going to miss a lot of people...I used to walk into the lounge to grab a bite to eat and I'd talk to the aides or environmental lady. Some of the nurses were just a pleasure to work with and some I definitely will not miss. It wasn't the best rotation I have ever been through, but I still got something out of it.

I feel like without the Mt Sinai internship I would not want to go into critical care so much because I just saw a gazillion things there that I did not experience at this hospital. The staff there worked SO WELL together and they were COMPETENT as hell. I am still amazed by the intelligence and expertise I saw over the summer internship. Bedside procedures, cool stuff like marsupialization, hardcore coding, trauma wounds and the NYPD being involved, ENT, vascular cases...just a whole slew of things. I dunno, I guess as a student it's really intriguing. There definitely was a cultural variety, a lot of the physicians/nurses/staff could speak Spanish, and many other languages, fluently. Here, at this hospital, the medical staff weren't very welcoming to other cultures and if a patient spoke Spanish, forget it. The staff wouldn't be happy at all.

Something interesting did happen yesterday- a family member of a patient who was slowly but surely recovering in ICU came out frustrated and fed up and said to the doctor "Get off your ass and do the job you get paid to do. Stop bullshittin!" Meanwhile, this doctor wasn't even working on his relative's case yet. WTF. We all just ignored it because we were so shocked. This relative usually abuses hospital visiting hours and so the nurse (it was my patient, so my preceptor really) went into the room and asked him to please leave the unit and that it was past visiting hours and the guy just said "you're fucking full of shit, bullshit, i can do what i want" and my nurse got so angry, she was just yelling at him "You don't talk to a doctor like that! That was very rude and unprofessional. It's past visiting hours and you rarely leave when we ask politely." The guy started to leave, cursing out the place, and shoving chairs into the nurses station, and we threatened to call security. He went downstairs and tried to complain and another doctor who was in the unit when he had his tantrum called him out as disrespectful and to never talk to another physician like that again. Turns out,both doctors he yelled at dropped his relative's case. Oh well. What can ya do.

I'll be working in a hospital still as a patient care associate/nursing assistant up until I take the boards, so it won't be the last time I step into the hospital before becoming an RN. I only have one more day, which is Nursing Pinning, when I have to wear my all white nursing uniform. Exciting!

I am just so excited that I've completed my preceptorship hours and took my two finals earlier this week. I had to present on bloodless medicine Monday night at like 8 pm and of the whole group, I definitely rocked it. I was planning on having my index cards, but those just went out the window when I went up because I had researched the topic enough. I was nervous about the professor asking questions, which he did, but it wasn't really in depth. The pens we gave out were needle syringe pens and the class loved it!

Friday, I have my nursing seminar ethical paper due; I focused my topic on DNR orders, healthcare proxy vs. legal will. I had a patient who was coding overnight and the proxy wanted everything done whereas the patient's legal will stated not to do anything that would support life by artificial means. Fortunately, the issue was cleared up the next day when a DNR order was consented to by the proxy (not so pretty overnight when everyone was like wtf do we do since they followed the proxy over the legal will).

I'm loving life right now and definitely just wanna step back and enjoy everything before I start working as a PCA back at the hospital...but yeah, I'm still in a daze and can't believe it..