Week One Done!

OK.... I am so exhausted!!! Of course to start off its totally all my fault because of staying up till midnight ( after finishing what I had to do for school ), to complete the 4th Book in the Twilight Saga. I have to say that I LOVED it. Breaking Dawn is my favorite hands down. So I read what over 1900 pages in a little under 4 days... NOT BAD!!!

Of course with that being said all the reading for Nursing School is probably the same, so I can't complain right? YEAH RIGHT!!

Its totally weird to be in a program that is just off and running so fast. So much has been covered already, so much we have done, and it still has only been 1 day of class and 1 day of lab.

I have to say that I almost had a heart attack when after leaving the house nearly 1 1/2 hours before class was due to start today that I covered the distance of the 33 miles with 10 minutes to spare. Thank God for carpool today as it was the only lane moving. They don't mess around here, you can not even be 1 second late because you get docked for it... no ifs ands or buts about it. You have to have so many class hours and so many clinical hours according to state mandate so we can't miss more than one day of class time total and zero of clinical time! I will leave at 5am for my 8am classes just in case there is a traffic SNAFU. Hey I can always read or study while I wait for class to start... we all know there is TONS of that to do.

OK so after the traffic, we sit down she closes the door and its, " Clear your desk for a Math quiz." OH crap!! So yeah I didn't do so bad, I forgot the formula for converting inches to centimeters and went the wrong way on the 2400 hr clock counting for my next dosage due time on a q8 dose, but over all for day 2 that's not so bad.

OK so then we got to go through our lab kits, so much fun stuff in there. The instructor was like, " I get so excited! Don't you!" Of course when we were splitting the stuff and taking inventory, all the really cool stuff is for next semester.

So a quick review of how to put on PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), wish I had a camera! then off to a Dosage and Calculations Lecture with advisement that there will be a test next Friday and we had better know ALL of our metric conversions and ratio and proportions.

We were given our clinical assignments for the duration of the semester, Nursing Home of course, then we went over all of our check off sheets and how we were to fill them out.

At that time we were introduced to the dreaded Care Plan, or as PN students call them Case Study, duh same thing every First Year Nursing student has to do either way. We were given two MAR sheets (medication administration) with injection and oral medications on them , 17 meds total and sent off to get the info= make drug card, find the nursing implications, interactions etc.

We were advised there would be a test on Tuesday on the NA Skills we will cover and those on the assigned reading we are of course already expected to know ( everyone has to be at least CNA certified to get into the program) So then we were also assigned a few more chapters to read and outline, then it was 45 min for lunch!

Back from lunch and into the lab for the remainder of the day. At this time my group and I had to present our Skills to the class that we were given. We were group two and had 20 minutes to present 6 skills and all of their rationals ( besides just )ADL's, but why they were done such and such way, what health considerations were effected...

So Pharmacology on Monday... tons of studying to do... but so far I am loving it.

I love my instructor! She is TOUGH, but she has such a range of information and she presents everything in a way that immediately demands your critical thinking skills to jump into action. She teaches across the entire spectrum of Nursing from the NA level through to the RN level. With an NCLEX pass rate of 100% I feel like I am in the right place.

Now I hope I don't blow it!!! We have a couple of weeks until the Med Math Test on which of course we have to score a 100% with which to continue in the program. We get 1 more chance to pass it, but with a penalty of being on probation if we don't pass it the first time.

Well off to listen to the lecture recordings and re-write my notes and start on those med cards for the 17 meds I have to look up. Reading and outlining tomorrow!