How time flies!

So i have been a graduate nurse for just over 16 weeks. Wow, it feels like it has been an eternity and only a few days all at the same time. I have completed my first aged care rotation. I was there for about 7 weeks and at first i was so incredibly nervous. Being the RN on a shift in aged care means your the nurse in charge. I had to call the shots when something went wrong, so i felt like it was a lot of pressure, however i chose to put on my little floaties and swim for my life. Im so glad i did, turns out i did pretty well.

The drug round in an aged care facility can be a bit of a nightmare. There are 25 residents in the Haven (where i was most of the time) and 17 residents in the Hostel. It takes about 2 hours to give out the tablets, as well as all the liquids, puffers, nebs, eye drops, nose sprays and creams that are on all the charts. The hardest part about the drug round was remembering how each resident took their tablets. For some you needed to crush them and mix them in yoghurt. Others you just put whole in yoghurt. Some you put on a spoon and popped them in the residents mouth one at a time, others you handed the pill cup to as it was. Needless to say, it took a while to get your head around everything.

Once the drug round was complete there were the wounds to take care of and any special day obs or care plan updates (each resident got a different day of the month for the nurse to just check on their general wellbeing and whether they had deteriorated at all from the previous month).

Not only were the above things to take care of every day, but there were the unexpected things that occured, such as falls, or unresponsive episodes. One resident broke his hip after a fall, and i was lucky to have such a great team on that day to help me with the basics, but i felt proud of myself that i knew how to handle the situation and that i identified his injury correctly.

I felt like i learnt a lot from my time in Aged care and am looking forward to heading back there at the beginning of August.

I am back in the hospital now. I am feeling confident (mostly) in my knowledge and each day continue to learn many new things. I went to an emergency simulation day a few weeks ago and one of the amazing drs at our hospital was running it. I learnt how to intubate on a dummy incase i ever needed to maintain an airway until the dr arrived at the hospital, as that is something that a RN is able to do. He also advised me that during my two weeks in theatre, if he was the anaesthist he would allow me to intubate the pts. Exciting! This training came in a little bit handy as well. The following friday night we had a man come in following a MVA and had not only broken his collarbone (well, smashed is a more accurate description) and he was cerebrally irritated. The MEDSTAR retrieval team were called and once they arrived they decided it would be best to intubate the pt to ensure he remained safe while on the journey to Adelaide as the space inside a helicopter is not very big when you are wrestling with a pt to keep in calm and still. I was given the job to keep his head stable while the MEDSTAR dr and nurse carried out the intubation. it was excellent having attended the emergency day and having an understanding of the intubation process and then being able to watch it in real life. Intubating a dummy was certainly easier, and not just because their fake tongues were so hard they stayed out of the way all on their own!! It turned out the guy had a small bleed which the drs in ICU at the RAH were treating conservatively and as far as i know he is ok.

i have also had some students working on the shifts with me and its an ego boost to see where they are at and just how far i have come in the past few years. Pretty amazing really, since as the person i dont feel any different, though my knowledge base has probably improved tenfold.

Thats enough yabbering on for now i think. Tho i do think (today) that i can do this nurse thing. And i am going to be fabulous!! xx