Seizure Woman

The next one is seizure woman. She was a friendly middle aged woman suffering from periodic seizures. One day our facilitator told me and my other classmate to go do neurological observations and glascow scales on her. She asked for permission in an orderly fashion and then had us play around with her hands and feet to test her strength.
The facilitator then did a eye response test using the mini torch and told my classmate to do it to the other eye. After she was done the facilitator asked me to do it. At this point the patient told us she was feeling a bit weird in the mouth, but the facilitator discarded it and told me to go on- so I did. Not long after I did my rounds of eye reflexes she started having epileptic seizures.

Immediately the facilitator ordered my classmate to press the red alarm button. She did and a whole medical team came up expecting to resuscitate a person from cardiac arrest or certain death. Of course they felt kinda pranked and the when asked who pressed the button, the facilitator did not fail to point out my classmate did it.

Anyway the one of the doctors stayed to give her therapy and the other nurses were taking her health stats. The patient stopped by now and the facilitator tried to jump in the middle of the working people and generally got in the way. Right after the team had left she told us to continue doing some more, my classmate said she wanted to "go to toilet" and I just walked away.

It was obvious that mm.. MAYBE PERHAPS THE CONSTANT FLICKERING OF LIGHTS INTO HER EYES TRIGGERED THE EPILEPSY?

Damn it, why did she even choose an epileptic seizure patient to be the target anyway when there are healthier patients who wouldn't suffer as much? Why didn't she take the warning signals carefully when the patient told us she did not feel well? Why didn't she tell the doctors that she was the one who suggested to press the rescue alarm? How could anyone worry about those stupid tests we were doing over the health/feelings of the patient? She treated her as more of a machine rather than a human, it was as if the patients feelings/emotions were irrelevant and once she was "repaired" we could go back to testing her out.

NO, BITCH THATS NOT HOW IT WORKS.

I can't believe this is the woman who failed me. If anyone was to fail, it would be her. She failed meet competent humanity and logical levels needed to live in any civilized society. I wish she loses the rights to facilitate and/or nurse because she really needs to find out where priorities lie.

Mr C

Bed 1 was Mr C. He was a very friendly chap. On the first day of the clinical practice nurses were always gossiping about how annoying he is. The first time I really got to see him was when I was doing his routine obs.

I asked about his conditions daily and we eventually got to become acquainted with one another. The patient had been involved in a car accident and is lucky to be alive. He was aiming to be a professional boxer and had been training himself up to keep in shape - that saved his life from a potential death. He was incredibly funny for a 30-40 year old. Once he told me to get the bottle because he was lazy and a nurse tripped over it because he just left it in the doorway. He was laughing and the nurse was pissed- it was unintentional of course.

He also told me he secretly had a crush on one of the nurses (even though I have been introduced to his girlfriend). He often encouraged nurses to let me try to help him with more advanced stuff like medications and IV machines to help me enhance my skills.

I think Mr C is just misunderstood in the ward. He just has a sense of humor and is not afraid to express it. It's amazing how far a daily greeting can help build nurse-patient rapport.

Bed 22

Its end of the 4th week and I still haven't bought my books. I'm falling behind and there's nothing I can do about it because they are out of stock! Anyhow, I better talk about my experiences at RPAH before I forget it all.

At first I did not enjoy the experience. The nurses were acting elite and weren't really guiding us around, while we felt overly useless and irrelevant since we could not help the patients in anything beyond our learning scope ( which is nearly everything apart form basic obs and basic duties of care).

However, by the end of the first week I felt a sense of accomplishment when one of the patients; bed no. 22 ( privacy purposes) remembered my name. He was a nice elderly man and was placed in a room where he was all alone despite him not having anything infectious. He asked me for my name one day as I was taking his obs and he commented that he felt lonely and isolated because no one else was giving him any company or attention since he was at the end of the ward and alone in the four-patient room. I told him that since I don't have much duties to do myself that I would go chat with him.

Since then I've been finding myself chatting to him about all sorts of things.. soccer, politics, history of Australia, morality... One day he asked me whether I had the power to help him change rooms. I joked that I am just a student nurse and I may have charisma but no authority whatsoever ( I wasn't real close with the nurses at that moment).In hindsight I failed to help him voice his request to those in power. It was 2 weeks later that I found out his partner had passed away 2 weeks prior to his admission and he was in the Korean War. Suddenly I realized why he mentioned that being in a isolated room felt like capital punishment of solitary confinement. I was totally careless and oblivious to the patients situation!!

We remained close 'friends' throughout his stay. The day that bed 22 was discharged I was present but I had to perform duties for other patients so I did not get the opportunity to bid him farewell personally, however I will fondly remember him and the lessons I have learnt during my care for him.

Sigh of Relief

It has been quite a while since I last posted. The reason for this was because I nearly failed the course which included the RPAH practicals. I just found out my mark 10 minutes ago it appears I am safe from failing.

Right now I have pretty mixed emotions. I got a credit of 66 for the subject- to which I lost the full 15points for the practicals. I should be happy because the clinical practices weren't critical to passing the course (unlike my previous clinicals at Canturbury), but it also meant that the mark I have worked so hard to achieve might have been higher.

I failed because on the second last day of clinicals I was caught not wearing a gown while palpitating for the pulse to do blood pressure on a MRSA patient. I was not aware that gowns were needed for such minimal contact and was not given a second chance. We were first semester students after all! I got failed on the spot... with only one more day to go. I felt that the call was unfair and I protested.. however the facilitators told me that they did not care about my circumstances so I had to take it higher up.

I saw the coordinator and she told me there was a chance I would fail the whole subject regardless of whether I got more than 50% overall because the clinical component is very important. Since then I have held my breath and hoped that all would turn out OK.

During this period I have been embraced with the support of many people around me and I feel very grateful for it. One thing which I found surprising was the understanding of my parents when I told them that I might have failed and will need to repeat ; they told me to just try harder next time and they did not ask me anymore about it.

Anyhow, I will talk about the experiences more later on. Dinner is soon and I am starving. For the results I got a mediocre average.. but I will keep pushing hard for perfection!

		Unit of Study Name	Mark	Grade
		Nursing Concepts: Bodies and Boundaries	75.0	Distinction
		Social Contexts of Health	74.0	Credit
		Observation in Nursing Practice	64.0	Pass
		Applied Nursing Practice	66.0	Credit