Contact | Clinical - the pivotal experience of the sophomore year of nusing school here at Pitt. 3 months ago I went into the hospital for the first time as a nursing student. Four hours, one day a week. Yea, scary is a good word for those first several weeks. I felt like I didnt know anything, wasnt really all that comfortable talking to patients, and still wasnt sure if I liked my clincal group made up of 8 other people, seven of those I didnt know at all, and an instructor. We were on a medical/surgical unit at Passavant hospital about half an hour away from campus. It was always funny to walk into the hospital dressed in our matching blue scrub uniforms while most everyone we walked past made some sort of comment like "hey, it's the girls in blue," or "well, I guess we can go home now since you're here." My first bath experience isnt quite the same as the one posted yesterday, but it was an experience nonetheless. We were paired up, which gave us a chance to really get to work with our group members and we were assigned one patient to the two of us. Yes, she was old..and didnt talk to us. We had actually never practiced on mannequins before either...just watched a stupid video where the nurse didnt wear gloves to wash the patient...GROSS! So..I believe to give all the care we knew at the time, while learning bed baths took us over an hour. That's a long time. It was an experience. Then our other group member's partner left her as she almost passed out, though from what no one's quite sure, including her. So we went to help her bath her patient as we were done with ours. Her patient didnt talk either..just laughed in a really scary way...like she was evilly laughing at us..weird. So we managed. We got through that day. Now, my first semester of clinical is over. I can actually walk into my patient's room and talk to them, and carry out whatever assessment it is that I had for the day. Yaay! I think I may actually even make it through the rest of nursing school...bigger Yaaay! Can ya tell I've basically done nothing non-nursing for awhile?! "As a student nurse, I was assigned to give my first bed bath to an elderly woman with emphysema and heart failure. I was told she went in and out of consciousness, and not to worry too much about communicating with her. I gathered the bath supplies, but the woman didn't move, open her eyes or acknowledge I was there. I thought giving her a bath would be like working on a mannequin, as we had often done in calss. While I ran the washcloth over her resting face, the warmnth of her skin and little ringlets of hair on her forehead made me keenly aware that, although we might not be able to communitcate verbally, she was still a human being. I bathed her gently as I would have bathed a baby. I had almost completed my task when a whisper came from her lips. 'You care,' she said, barely audible. I bent down near her face, touched her cheek and asked what she had said. She repeated, 'You care.' Her eyes were open. Her voice was crackly and breathing labored, but she had something she wanted to say. 'Most of the nurses dont think I notice, but I do.'
By then, her face was animated and she went on to tell of events in her childhood and the antics of her grandchildren. She seemed to be having so much pleasure talking and remembering as I finished bathing her. She gave me advice about my life, then patted my hand and finally said, 'I'm tired now.'
*From Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul |
