Nursing school is fun

It's been a week and a day, and I'm really enjoying myself. Just sayin'. This despite the fact that I have to get up early (I know, woe is me) and be at class early.

I'm taking 3 courses this quarter: pharmacology, pathophysiology, and "fundamentals of nursing." The first two are straight-up lecture-and-exam format (with lectures on one topic or the other for about 5.5 of our 8 hours in class on Mondays and Fridays), the third occurs in lecture, lab, and after the end of week two (this week), clinic. I'll devote a separate post to the awesomeness of my pharmacology textbook. There are information, concepts, and skills we're trying to learn and absorb coming at us from many directions, so there's a lot of straight-up homework as well as studying.

I've been mildly surprised and totally pleased that my textbooks from my prerequisite courses (Anatomy and Physiology and Microbiology), as well as my books from taking my nursing assistant certification (NAC) courses, have been helpful; I've referred to them lots while completing assignments and going over stuff that doesn't make sense from class notes. All of this stuff actually connects! :)

Last week we had our first 3 lab sessions, 4 hours each, 3-4 "classes" per session. We worked on blood pressure, temperature, bed baths, bed-making (for unoccupied and occupied beds), oral care ... really, mostly on things that NACs, not nurses, do in normal settings. I found my NAC training super useful for this, and realized the nurses instructing us haven't had to perform several of these skills in a long time, and as a result, hadn't thought through the chain of transmission (of pathogens)--at what point in these processes do you have to wash your hands and doff and don gloves again? It was, however, a much less scarily exact set of procedures than it was for my NAC training (aspiring NACs can fail their exam if they do crucial or trivial things in the wrong order), and I guess this is because nurses are allowed to think, and NACs aren't supposed to. Nonetheless, reading through the same procedures in my NAC books after re-learning this stuff was great, because I had a better idea of the do-what-when rationale underlying them. Better still, an actual order that someone thought through at some point, thoroughly enough to be worth including in a book for NACs, includes necessary materials and lots of picky details...since NACs should memorize, not think. :/ This isn't quite fair of me to say, however; at least one of my instructors said multiple times that in such-and-such a situation, she would ask her "nurses' aides," because they have a better idea about whatever it is.

We currently have many nursing instructors for lab because we're divided into our 6 clinical site groups (about 8 people per group), and for each lab, an instructor will teach one set of skills repeatedly, so we rotate through. I've noticed some funny linguistic usages and habits that most of our nursing instructors have. I'm no better at not asking questions in lab or lecture than I've ever been at any point in my life. In response, a few of the instructors will give a hand-wavey answer whether or not they have a real one, and follow that up with, "Does that make sense?" It's like they all learned that they're supposed to verbally check comprehension, but the question comes across more as a termination of inquiry than a genuine solicitation of admissions of confusion. They say "Does that make sense?" I hear, "It should make sense. If it doesn't add up to you, that's your problem, not a conflict in the various sources of information you've been given."

This is especially odd given that we're supposed to be developing "critical thinking skills." This is another buzzword we've heard several times. Rather than, "think about it," or explaining that critical thinking actually means analyzing new information in light of what you've previously understood, attempting to reconcile the two, and questioning discrepancies, we're told, "use your critical thinking skills." But in actuality, if our "critical thinking skills" lead us to ask questions at an inconvenient time, the response isn't ideal. (I am grateful that this seems to be more of a lab than a lecture issue.)

For example, one of the instructors was leading a practice on temperature taken at several different locations with several different instruments (did you know that a temporal temperature takes an average of temperatures across your forehead!?) and height and weight, and the metric to standard conversions that go along with those. I had to weigh my partner, so before I did so, I attempted to zero the scale. The weight that I would think should slide back and forth so the scale _would_ zero just didn't move. I looked all around the scale, was still at a loss, and finally asked the instructor. She tried to do the same thing I had, and when she got the same non-results, she said, "Weight is something you want to know as a baseline, so you can compare gains and losses over time, or know if there's sudden gain, which would be indicative of edema. In infants, small differences in weight matter, especially if you're administering meds, but in adults, a pound or two doesn't matter. Use your critical thinking skills! [Repeats all of the foregoing in a different order, then half of it again.] Does that make sense?"

While all of this did make sense, she had effectively denied that it was problematic that this scale seemingly could not be zeroed. She tried it, gave up, moved on, then gave me a spiel that indicated I shouldn't have tried to zero it (I guess). I'm hoping I'll get better at predicting which questions will stump/irritate the instructors, who will be our clinical supervisors, and just avoid those. Maybe at clinic there will be other people I can ask things of without causing frustration?

During our third lab session, after learning about "SBAR" (Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation), a communication protocol in medicine aimed at preventing medication errors through general improvement of communication, we did a simulation on one of these:

https://my.smccme.edu/ics/Institute_for_MFTE/Simulation_Lab/Meet_the_mannequins.jnz

(that's a random google hit)

Our Vital Sims mannequin is named Stu-the-Dude, and his compatriot Alex is currently across the country getting repaired, so we have a stand-in (lie-in?) named Miguel. In our lab, there's a "hospital room" with two beds, one for Stu, one for Miguel. They are hooked up to computers so that a person behind the 1-way glass wall of the lab can control their blood pressure, pulse and respiration rates, thus allowing students to be tested on taking the correct measurements of all these vital signs. The person at the controls can even talk into a microphone the speaker of which is in the Sims's mouth. After our introduction to Stu and Miguel, we were given 10 minutes or so to practice taking vitals on them, then our instructor Joanne (primary instructor of Fundamentals of Nursing, and head of the entire summer program, which is an absurd amount of coordination to do, bless her) told us we were going to do a simulation.

"As y'all are walking to clinic in the morning you see Stu riding his skateboard down the hill, lose control, and run into a stop sign. He's bleeding profusely from his femoral artery. You 4, leave the room. You 4 are on the scene. What do you do?"

Ack!

Four of us went into the lab to stand behind Julianne, our other F.O.N. instructor, as she tried to talk into the microphone like a skateboarder between moans in her unusually high-pitched, girly voice, while changing Stu's vitals. We watched through the one-way glass. The first team was given about 10 minutes, instructed to decide whether to tell 911 they needed an ambulance (A-car, I think it's called?) or paramedics. Then it was our turn, and we were supposedly there while the paramedics arrived, and had to make the transition, giving them necessary information.

Turns out Joanne was mostly interested in our ability to work as a team and get a job done, and we briefly discussed how that works. She said normally decisions happen because (1) there's an established hierarchy or (2) someone was first on the scene or (3) the person with the most confidence starts delegating. This was a little weird, though, since we're all new to each other and the program, and no one, I think, wants to be, or be perceived as, bossy or center-of-attention-ish, because one might run the risk of being disliked. Not useful in a program where one's cohort is so essential to one's survival.

After that brief discussion, Joanne had us do it again, reversing roles, and deciding ahead of time who would be in charge. Both groups performed better--of course, we knew what the situation would be ahead of time and had practice, as well.

This whole exercise was stressful and really, really fun. It reminded me of competing theories of language learning. Some instructors only want to give you problems that you have every tool to solve. Others want you to put things together, and attempt to reach beyond your level, and learn that way. I was in the latter camp, and I am excited that my instructors, and this program's philosophy, seem to (mostly) be in that camp, too.