Adults (clinical)

I figured since I've already talked a bit about my psych/mental health clinical, I should at least touch on the other clinical I'm doing this semester: adults. Basically you get to pick a general medical-surgery floor on which to spend your clinical to get some experience with an adults population. I'm on an acute care surgery floor, so we get patients both pre- and postoperative. It's been really interesting so far, but nowhere near as interesting as my psych clinical. It's also been a bit busier than my first summer clinical on the orthopedic floor since now we are responsible for our patient's meds, too (this summer we weren't responsible for giving meds).

There are a few reasons why I like this floor better than ortho - and the biggest one is that none of the patients that I was assigned when working on ortho could get up and walk! On my current floor, many of the patients are ambulatory (able to move about). I got a bunch of experience using safe-lifts this past summer, but I am much happier to have them up and about on their own! I also like the layout and set-up of the floor I'm on this fall. It's located in a different hospital than the one I was in over the summer and this hospital is much newer. On this floor, everything (supplies, meds, nutrition, etc.) is conveniently accessible from the patient rooms whereas on the last floor it was all centralized and much of it was out of the way. 

Overall it's been a good experience so far and I'm sure I'll continue to see quite a variety of things working here. I also will be spending a day in the OR later in November, but I'm not sure what surgery I will watching until the week before. Get excited for a post on that though - it may or may not include disposable paper scrubs!