(fake) Mental Status Exams in the Afternoon

I keep wanting to catch up on some of the things that have happened so far, but I'm short on time (like any good nursing student) so I'll focus today on this last week.

I have finished the lecture part of my psych-mental health class!!! This is amazing and I almost felt like it would never come. We had 4 major exams every other week for the first 7 weeks, and they were just plain difficult. The first focused mainly on psychopharmacology and I think we all thought it couldn't get any worse. But that turned out to be, at least for me, the least of my problems in this class so far. That was really rote memorization and the other tests proved much more difficult for me, with lots of "select all that apply" questions with built in answers that, I swear, in some instances, could've gone either way. But apparently our professor loves questions that are just as tough, if not tougher, than NCLEX questions. I know I should be grateful that I am being prepared early for this test-of-all-tests, however, some of these questions were ridiculous.

I should also be grateful that our school has about a 97% NCLEX pass rate, and for the accelerated students it's more like 99%. Could I possibly be that 1% that doesn't make it? Blah. It feels so far in the future that it's hard to even imagine being anywhere near ready for it.

This week I start my clinical experience for psych-mental health in an acute care psych ward of a major hospital in town. I'm on from 3:30 to 11:30pm so that means I have to get in there at about 2:45 in order to be ready for report, which starts at 3pm. We had an orientation to our clinicals for two very long days last week, in which we sat in a giant lecture hall for 8 hours for most it, until the last couple hours which were spent doing simulated mental health status exams with professors acting as patients with certain diagnoses. We had to come up with their diagnosis, and follow through with the interviews for 30 minutes. My "patient" had PTSD and was "sleeping" when I arrived in the "clinical area." The first interviewer (not me) decided to wake her up by touching her on the shoulder at which time she jumped up flailing about trying to punch and kick at us (kinda). After the "patient" settled down, we got into the interview and she seemed relatively stable other than flashbacks. It turned out well, and the initial interviewer showed great nonverbal skills and therapeutic communication techniques. I basically got to watch that part and take notes on the client's speech patterns and nonverbals. So far that has been one of the best learning experiences during classes.

My First Blog

I had thought about blogging about my student nurse experience for a couple months, and since I am a bit of a procrastinator, here I am. Almost five months into my nursing program, here comes my blog.

A bit of background. I started nursing school in June of 2009. I'm in an accelerated second-degree bachelor's program and recently started the fall semester after a less-than-hectic summer of basic nursing classes. So far, it has been interesting, to say the least, relatively difficult, and my schedule has been pretty much jam-packed since fall started.

Yesterday my clinical group for a Health Promotion class went to a government-funded low- to no-income home where we had to brainstorm about clinics we can set up to help people in the community. Some ideas are blood pressure clinics, a sock drive for the homeless, nutrition information, and, my personal un-favorite, a foot-care clinic. Our clinical instructor is basically making us do a foot care clinic for either low-income folks or the homeless. So we thought we'd do a sock drive in order to be able to give people decent new socks who may not be able to buy socks for themselves. I know how important foot care is, but have a hard time with feet, and really need to look inside myself and remember the beauty of helping others in this way. It is a basic need that many, many people really don't have the means or understand the importance of. So many problems can arise from improper or neglected foot care. However, I need to get over the gross factor and see beyond my superficial view of the whole thing.

Much more to come.