Friday, March 14, 2008

Life in the ER

Ahhhhh, remember ER when George Clooney and Juliana Margulis were on it...  I haven't watched that show in YEARS but used to be a devoted fan.

Anyway, my evening in the ER wasn't quite as glamorous but it was a lot of fun!  It was busy and the time flew by.  Compared to how time creeps by on Med/surg it was great!  I got to do stuff to.  This is very very important  in nursing school.  I even STARTED AN I.V.!!!!  How cool is that! The first one I tried I didn't get in the vein.  It rolled away when I tried to get in.  The second one I got in even though it was a small vein on a lady who has had LOTS of I.V.s in her life (She was a kidney transplant patient.  Not sure what was wrong with her last night but I think it was congestive heart failure on some level.)  It was a little nerve wracking to think I was going to subject someone to my inexperience but it has to be done!  I also got to start a Foley catheter.  That was much easier than I thought it would be.  It was on a sweet old lady who was very confused and complaining of fulness in her abdomen.  The doctor thought she was very dehydrated and wanted a foley to see if she had any urine at all.  Within a few seconds of starting the foley we drained about 350ml from her.  No wonder she was uncomfortable.  Poor thing.  I also hung a bunch of I.V.s, hooked them up to the I.V. pumps, gave I.V. push medications and gave a suppository.  Not as yucky as I thought it would be.  Another thing that was cool was seeing various disease processes that we've talked about in class play out in real live patients.  
Overall, it was a huge relief to experience a form of nursing that i found interesting, exciting and challenging because my clinical experiences so far have rarely met those criteria. 

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