Out-Rotation, The Operating Room, and Week 14

I tend to dread clinical weeks because I don't get much sleep, and I don't feel like I am performing at my very best because of it. However, this week was different due to being on "out-rotation." This means I was able to go different places in the hospital outside of the beloved Med/Surg unit, and I don't have to do research. So, it really means that I got to go to bed early while my friends were up till the wee hours of the morning stressing over paperwork! In out-rotation we all get to experience the operating room (OR) for one day, and then we had a choice of either Physical Therapy (PT) or Radiology. I chose PT because I thought it would be something I would use more as a nurse later down the road. Radiology would have been cool, but PT was just more practical in my mind.

Fellow nursing students told me they were bored in PT in previous weeks, so I began to worry that I'd made the wrong choice, but I had such a different experience than my friends! The physical therapists that I worked with were so eager to teach me what they do, and why they do it. They were all very positive, and encouraging. One of the therapists even thanked me for my help and told me I will be a good nurse... I was happy to see that my instructor was just a few feet away and heard the praise. It made me more confident that day.

The operating room was a totally different experience for me. Since I am just in my first semester, there is not really much hands on stuff I am allowed to do yet. In the OR, this means I can stand in the corner and watch... for 8 long cold hours! The temperature was about 60 degrees, and my back and legs are stiff from standing all day. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I could have scrubbed in and assisted. Of course, that would be completely out of my scope of practice at this point. My instructor even asked if my day was "blah" because that's what my body language was telling her! I said "yes, it was a very blah day!" I did get to see some neat surgeries, and the nurses were great and worked as a perfectly synchronized team. I just know that I am not called to be a surgical nurse.

I only have 4 weeks left in the semester, and I can't believe how fast it went. I have a paper on "medication error" due next week for one class, and then the entire group of nursing students will have a Critical Thinking Seminar Monday & Tuesday. I'm glad that Thursday will be Thanksgiving, because I know I will be thankful for that to all be over! The Critical Thinking Seminar will be interesting because we will be in groups to research patients, and then we will sit on a panel to field questions from our instructors. Basically it's a group project that we'll be individually tested on by oral exam. YIKES!

That's all I have for now. It's only 19:00 and I'm exhausted. I guess that could be since I woke up at 05:00 for my date with the OR?