first week down, many more to go

First week of clinicals down, many more to go!

I go for clinical duty on Thursdays and Fridays. This was my first week. Routine goes like this-- I wake up at 3:30AM, eat breakfast, shower, get ready, and then grab my things and leave the house. And congratulate me! I am no longer chickened out by Manila driving because I drive myself to the hospital before 5AM and then back at past 2PM. Parking isn't that bad at the hospital where I go for duty too.

My group's rotation is at the Female Surgical Ward. On our first day it was orientation, lecture, then orientation again. We practiced our basic nursing skills-- vital signs! And then our Clinical Instructor taught us how to chart our patient's vital signs. We were also given one patient each to take care of. My first patient was a sixty nine year old female with 4th Stage Breast Cancer. She was post-op for Modified Radical Mastectomy when I first met her but she already underwent surgery when I went back today. It was difficult to interview her for History of Present Illness because Nanay is deaf. She cannot totally hear that's why I interviewed her daughter instead. When I came back on friday, Nanay wasn't on her bed anymore because she was in the operating room already. I got assigned to a post-op appendectomy patient and gave her morning care, regulated her I.V., and took her vital signs. It all sounds easy but it isn't because we also have charting to care of and computations and.....THE LIST GOES ON.

I enjoyed my first two days of clinical duty although it's very tiring aside from the fact that I have to wake up at 3.30AM in the morning to get to the hospital by 5am so that we'll have time to read our patients' charts before 6AM endorsement.

I can't wait for next week!