.....Pediatrics and Mental Health too!!...is school over yet :(

OOOKKKKK So, obviously I lied when I wrote that I was going to upload a video/write a blog post the minute that I finished my horrific pediatric rotation..because pediatrics was done 5 weeks ago and I am also nearing the end of my mental health rotation and yet still no blog posts or videos. :( Hopefully I can crank one out for you guys by the end of this weekend! For now I shall recap my experience for both!

Pediatrics & Mental Health
After being in mental health I can confidently say that I would take 2 rotations in peds over mental health any day. I miss Peds right now. Ugh, mental health most definitely is NOT my forte. More power to the people who work in mental health but this is NOT the area for me. I'm sticking to my emergency room. I <3 the ER. Peds really isn't THAT bad.

I changed my mind. I WILL have a video up for you guys by Saturday night talking about peds and mental health :)

On another note, let me share a facebook status I posted a little while ago:

I hate school. I actually hate it. THIS IS TOO MUCH SCHOOL....school is making me bitter and resentful towards the entire world. School sucks. Seriously....eff school. Fuck this. GHASKLHGLGHAWIO;GHWO;GWO;BGA;BG

So, can you tell that school has me a LITTLE stressed out..hehe. Just a bit... Jeez, school this semester has been super crazy and seriously has probably permanently raised my blood pressure and I probably suffer from HTN right now. Great. At this point in time I have one more group project and 1 essay left to write 1 final and then I am FREE until the summer semester...feels good. Graduation is about 1 year away and it seriously could not come any sooner. Anyone else getting fed up with school? :( wah. get me outta here!!  

Semester 5 and exercise? whhaaattttt?

 Helloo! So, semester 5 is making me a crazy person. Too many assignments/too little time. If you guys follow me on twitter ( @mandeepg88) you have noticed that majority of my tweets are about school taking over my LIFE.  Hence that lack of blog posts, and whenever I am blogging it is usually when I am procrastinating on some type of homework LOL.  Another common theme on my twitter page is exercise. I have always been somewhat of a fitness fanatic, but lately I have been in overdrive. I got myself a lovely personal trainer last summer and he is kick ass. One of my videos was about how to keep yourself sane while in nursing school because TRUST ME, you will go crazy, and a big part of me staying sane is working it out at the gym. Nothing like a little bit of sweat to de-stress yourself!

I'm not sure how many of you do 'Clinical Decision Making Models'...basically it's an assignment that you do where you pick a patient and do a write up on them regarding their health status and writing nursing diagnoses, but I hate writing them. They suck...that is what I am currently procrastinating from.

There are 2 weeks left in my rotation in pediatrics! As soon as I am done I will upload a video for you guys talking about how my experience was. It was...interesting....LOL.

Until next time xoxoxoxoxoxox. 

Waiting...takes forever

I applied for a student nurse job. I'm waiting for an interview. This is taking forever. I'm so ready to leave retail behind forever and this interview needs to find its way to me RIGHT NOW! Waiting sucks.
On another note. I'm halfway through my peds rotation and okay I'm not freaking out AS much as I was before but I think pediatrics isn't really my thing. I have a more detailed video about peds when I'm finished my rotation (4 more weeks), but I think I'll stick to surgical or ER. School is also making me crazy. Whoever told me that 3rd year is the most difficult was correct. I've scaled back my hours at work and spend every waking hour either hitting the gym or hunched over textbooks. It's sad. I've forgotten what life before school was like. Boo. Sigh.......I;m currently procrastinating...I need to go write my paper. :( See you guys soon! Hope everyone is doing well this semester!

Pediatrics

So, yesterday I orientated at the big pediatrics hospital in my area.  I was initially very nervous about starting this clinical rotation because of the children. I've worked with adults for 2 years now in my clinical rotations but children honestly scare the crap out of me :| Everything with them is so precise because they are so small! Everything is different...the IV pumps, the med dosages, the calcualtions...I think forgetting and reverting back to my automatic "im taking care of an adult" mode might be to easy to get into and I'm super nervous about it! I'm also extremely nervous about keeping my emotions in check with all the peds patients. I've been known to cry at TV commercials so I don't know if I can hold it together infront of a child. Kids aren't supposed to be sick! They are supposed to run around and be healthy. Seeing sick kids kind of freaks me out....I do one 12 hour shift a week so yesterday was my orientation and next Tuesday will be my first full working shift on the unit. I.Am.Terrified. :|

Year 2 Complete!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year to all of you! Hope you had amazing holidays filled with lots of love and family and whatever else you wanted! I am now officially a 3rd year nursing student!! I can't even believe I am a 3rd year student.  There are so many things I have learned in the 2 years I have been a nursing student and so many amazing experiences I have had that I can't even begin to imagine what the rest of my nursing career has in store for me. I made a video for you guys talking about my second year! Hope you like it! Enjoy! Until next time xoxoxoxox

Year 2 completion video!  

Overstuffed Brain?

Hellloooo boys and girls!  There was a comment posted on my wall about remembering procedures and various disorders and illnesses and the nursing care associated with these so here is my response. :) 

When it comes to pathophysiology I do my best to understand the disease holistically, meaning that I look at the overall picture and how it affects the body and the person.  I study for exams and then I feel like the information kind of disappears. The only way information seems to stick is when I do it in clinical. This the same for patho as well as skills. The more and more I do them in clinical the better it sticks in my head. I def have my moments where I'm in clinical and asked a question and I just stare at the teacher like..WHAT?!?!?! Never fear, happens to everyone, but the nice thing is once you know the answer to that question you won't forget it! I feel like once I have learned about a disorder (ex. diabetes) it's hard for me to visualize it until I care for a patient who has diabetes and can put my care plan into action. Clinical is where most of my learning takes place and sticks.

I also find that it helps if I do specific reading prior to going to clinical. For example I recently just completed a rotation on maternity (video coming soon!), before going to maternity I brushed up on post partum readings that I would need to be responsible for. Example, knowing complications of a vaginal delivery and a c section, knowing what kind of assessments need to be done and how to perform them, how to care for a newborn and how to assess newborn, what kinds of things to look for on the newborn. Very basic breastfeeding..etc.etc..anything you feel would be relevant just come prepared. You also learn things on the unit as well which will help pull all your theoretical learning together. I  brush up on skills before going into every semester especially if I feel like a certain skill is more likely to come up that I haven't performed before.  I hope this rambling helped answer your question 'It's Me :)' Have a great weeks guys!! xoxoxoxox. .

Orthopedic surgery...whhhaaatttttttttt ;)

So I became a little video happy and actually filmed two videos in one night but the by the time the second one was all edited and ready to be uploaded I was too tired so I let it upload overnight and it's up! This video is about my experience in Orthopedic surgery and some things I feel that every student should know. Below are my tips listed in the video for more elaboration pleaseeeeee watch the video :)

• NVA : Neurovascular Assessments

• These are so important I just cannot even stress how important it is to know the neurovascular status of your patients limb that was operated on. If your patient had a R knee replacement  you want to make sure that the blood vessels and nerves passing through the operating site are still intact and working fine and that blood going all the way down to the tips of their toes so you check for warmth, sensation, movement, circulation and pulses. You are always comparing one limb to the other to ensure that they are both equal
•  Knowing your surgery:
• Make sure you know what suregery your patient had and the potential complications so you know what to watch out for and where to focus your assessment. 
• Knowing your complication:
• For most orthopedic surgeries I came across the following complications that I was always monitoring for : pain assessment, watching for compartment syndrome, urinary retention, decreased healing and constipation (especially for patients on opioids)
• Knowing your drugs:
• This tip goes for all rotations but especially for orthopedics because you are handing out a lot of antibiotics, opioids, anti emetics..so you need to know what they are, what they do, what other drugs they interact with and also what their side effects are. Don't be afraid to go look in a drug guide if you are ever doubtful!
• Know your precautions
• Each orthopedic surgery is going to come with a certain set of precautions (the way the pt can or cannot move) depending on the type of surgery that they had. It's your job to not only encourage your pt to adhere to these precautions but to also enforce them and help your patient in doing them. It's for their own good! 
• H-T Assessments
• Doing a head to toe assessment feels fairly comfortable in your 2nd year but always do a very thorough assessment that way you have a baseline and can be alert to changes in your patients status as some patients statues can change very quickly post op. 

I hope this was useful for you guys!!! The link for the video is below and let me know what you think  by commenting here or on my video:D

Clinical Tips for Orthopedic Surgery!

Hey school...Stop stressing me out!

A VIDEO! See, I told you guys, it's finally here. This video was a request from youtube user MissNessax3 and she asked about how I handled all the stress from nursing school and kept myself sane. So the link to the video is below and here is more of a blurb.
The one thing I forgot to talk about in this video is how your prefessors can actually help lower your stress level (even though they cause it in the first place...go figure) If you are feeling super overwhelmed with homework, tests, papers, quizzes and all the looming deadlines then it's always a good idea to shoot your teacher an e-mail and ask if there is anyway you can have an extension. I have used this in the past before and have usually been given the extension that I have asked for. It also helps if you have a good track record with that teacher and are always participating in class or on time etc. etc.

ALSO! Don't forget that you have friends in the program with you who are most likely facing similar challenges and you can always turn to them for support! It's nice to get a study buddy involved and have them study with you and complete assignments together and just keep each other on track in general. Nursing is SUPER stressful, trust me I know, and it feels like you're never going to finish but slowly and surely we will all make our way to the finish line and when we do it's going to feel GOOD because we know how hard we worked to get there. So take a day for yourself here and there, stay organized so you're not stressing out about missing assignments (check out my organizational video for that) and make sure you do a little bit of homework every day and you'll be just fine :D Happy Friday boys and girls!!!

Stressed Out Nursing Video

wooooo

Today I swear it...a video approaches...I actually sat down and brainstormed....

School Approaches Surgical/Maternity

Hellooo there fellow nursies. School is approaching. My 4 week practicum in Surgical and maternity are coming up Oct20. Let me tell you guys that I am not AT ALL thrilled about maternity. Pregnant women about to give birth kinda freak me out and I'm scared I'm going to drop a baby. Eeeekk! Half of my fellow nursing friends are doing the surgical/maternity rotation right now and have had nothing but good things to say about it but I still would rather run off the ER and hang out there for 2 weeks......weird hey? Oh well, to each his own.

And before I forget, I have twitter which I update more frequently than this so if you're interested in following me follow me @mandeepg88
And@!! I WENT TO VEGAS. And it was fantastic. The weather was beautiful the pool parties were amazing and the nightlife was fantastic although now I am very aware of how much it hurts to wear heels for longer than an hour :| LOL. I spend my days in scrubs and sweats and running shoes so this was a shock for my poor little feet. But I loved getting all dressed up because we spend majority of our time dressed down. I don't know about you guys but when Im up at 5am getting ready for a 12 hour clinical day or school I don't really feel like getting all crazy about my hair/makeup. Ugh.
I know I always say this but hopefully a new video soon? You guys have no reason to believe me at this point. :( Till Next time!