Clinical Practice #2

Unlike the first week at clinical practice, today's clinical was full on. I was exposed to many situations/emotions which I never thought possible. We were given a lot ( perhaps too much) of autonomy this time by the nurse in charge of us. She was out and about and just ordered us to do things and left me and my other student friend handling the patients.

The first thing we were told to do was feed patients. I was delegated to a frail elderly woman with mild dementia. She was very uncooperative because she would not eat off my spoon. I talked to her and told her to open her mouth; and when she replied 'ok' the spoon entering her mouth was met with her teeth's resistance. It was really frustrating because it was only my first day and I was given the responsibility to deal with someone with confusion while my colleague was given a 'normal' patient.

It took me approximately 30 minutes to feed her one small tub of porridge and after that I was told to help her up for cleaning. Again she was uncooperative so we tried to give her a bed bath. I got the warm water ready and started wiping her... but the nurse saw what I was doing and reminded me that I needed to strip everything off of her. Although I have always known that I will see naked elderly people, I never expected it to be so in-my-face. I'm not sure if any words could express my feeling of the sight.

What made it doubly worse was that when her nappy was unwrapped, there was a stench of dead babies (or what I imagine dead babies to smell like). She had diarrhea wrapped up like a subway sandwich with a whole load of urinal sauce to top it off. The nurse came in and told us immediately that a change of plan was needed and decided bed bath was not the best idea. We put her onto a commode chair and tried to wheel her in to the shower room. She was again not co operating and resisted getting onto the chair. It took 3 of us to lift her up and help her onto it. The nurse left right after this again and it was up to us two. On the way to the shower, she defecated a whole lot of anal gravy onto the floor and we had to put her onto the toilet asap. It stunk up the whole room (which had 3 other patients in it).

However, she ran out of gravy by the time we got her onto the toilets. I kept an eye on her while my friend asked the nurse what we should do in such a situation. My partner came back and told me we should continue with the shower and leave the faeces on the floor for the cleaner. So there we were in the small shower room; two guys, a demented granny and a few pieces of faeces smudged on the floor.

To be honest, the smell was really horrible. The steam from the shower evaporated the moisture from the faeces and it felt like we were being incubated inside this shit hole. I volunteered to the control the hose for the warm water while my friend did the hands on cleaning. We then got her dressed up again and put her back on the bed. For some reason I can still smell her 'morning glory' after taking a big bath and washing my hands multiple hundred times.

In the end she seemed very happy... which in the end made me feel all the effort helping her was worth it. We did much more.. but that was probably the main event of the day. I think now that we have somewhat of a grasp of what to do, nurses will expect and delegate more tasks for us next week.

I guess that I was a bit taken back because the exposure to the nursing practice was too sudden, as I thought that the nastier stuff would be more gradual .
Although I may sound like I was disgusted with the process, it was actually ok for me. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a helpless person smile in appreciation of your efforts.