team leader

so, being the team leader was not as bad as I thought it might be. it was actually quite enjoyable. monday I helped the other students pick out their patients, and then kind of got a general history on each patients for my own knowledge. after our little "monday meeting," I wrote down everyone's meds, and went home to try and write med cards for all of the meds. needless to say, I didn't end up doing them all. a couple of the patients had quite a few, and my med cards tend to be a little more time consuming than other people's med cards. overachiever, I know. one of girls in my class had two very needy patients, so I made sure to get those meds done, in case I was called upon to help.

tuesday came far too quickly, and I realized before I left home that it was going to be our last day on the surgical floor. so I grabbed one of my example thank you cards (sad...but I at least took a picture beforehand) and I got to clinical early to write down med times, so I could get on everyone's case about doing their medications on time. then I went to report with the charge nurse. the rest of my entailed making sure that everyone did the stuff that they were supposed to, and on time. it was almost like pulling teeth. especially this one guy...grr. but he finally got everything done. about 5 hours after he was supposed to. I also got to flush a picc line, put "ambu bags" signs on all of the cupboards (so that people would know where they were in an emergency, and so that they were all in the same place in each room). I helped some guy put up posters in all of the bathrooms reminding patients not to flush stuff down the toilet that wasn't supposed to be flushed. I watched a lady do an ekg. I answered a whole bunch of call lights. I saline locked an iv. I pulled a couple of iv's. at the end of the day this kid (who was there because of some asthma problems) ran up the stairs from getting a soda and some candy. he, however was on telemetry, and when he ran up the stairs, his heart rate when tachy. obviously. we (a couple other students, our instructor, and I) watched his heart rate on the monitor and not slow down, even after he had been lying in his room for over 10 minutes. so we all (and there were quite a few of us) went into his room to get his blood pressure and pulse. afterwards, our instructor pulled us away to discuss the patient. he wanted to discuss the fact that while the stairs did explain the fast heart rate, in the back of our minds we should be thinking about what else could cause a fast heart rate, especially since he left the unit. when I left the floor, almost 40 minutes later, his pulse had dropped, but was still hovering around the 120's to 130's. (a normal resting pulse is 60-100). hmmmm.........perplexing.

one of the more interesting patients... she had a craniotomy to relieve some pressure last week after stroking out in CCU. she even blew a pupil. crazy. but it was actually kind of sad to see all of her family and friends in the room having to make very important decisions about her life.

overall, it was a good day, and I kept quite busy. I don't know if I did a good job as "team leader," but at least I did it and didn't get yelled at. next week we move down to the medical floor, which my friend tells me is even more interesting. yeah!