For my Istan day, my fellow classmates (Julia James, Brooke Edwards,
and Alexis White) and I cared for a 85 year old female admitted for dehydration
and urinary retention caused by a drug interaction between 2 home medications she
had been taking. We completed many task during our simulation and were very
efficient in the time we were given. We performed our assessment, identified
the absence of an arm band, called admissions and obtained another one,
discovered there was no statlock on the patient’s catheter, applied a new one, we
discovered the patient had more allergies then were listed, and obtained an
allergy band to place on the patient. Morning medication was administered, labs
were drawn, and a sterile urine specimen was taken from the Foley catheter to
be sent to the lab.
I feel that I learned team work is very important when
working with others to provide care for a patient but I also think that next
time in simulations, I will not solely rely on the other members of the team to
check behind one another, and I will double check things myself.
The main things I learned from watching my peers is that it
is key to communicate properly and have a plan before initiating care, even if
the plan goes completely upside down, have some sort of ground plan to fall back
on and go back to when things get chaotic and you need to evaluate what things
are priority, which is another thing I learned from my peers, it is important to
step back and assess how high of a priority are the things you are doing at
that moment compared to the things that are waiting to be done. Also, I learned
that it is important to be able to handle any situation well, no matter how odd
or difficult the situation may be, keep your patient’s safety and well-being in
mind first and handle the situation with that in mind.
One of my favorite parts of clinical and simulations is when
we are able to take the things we have learned in the class room and out then
into effect and it all starts coming together and making more sense. In this
simulation, we focused on hydration, encouraging fluids and closely monitoring intake
and output, we discussed mediation interactions and how certain medications
could affect the patient and also how it is important to keep the patient educated
about what is being done to them, given to them, and the status of the care
they are receiving.
- Victoria Saranthus
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ReplyDeleteHi Victoria!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you and your group were able to stay relatively busy during your simulation lab! Reading what all you and your group were able to accomplish is impressive. Working as a team in a tight space can prove to be challenging at times, especially when everyone is working on different tasks. And I have to agree with what you said, it's always good to double and triple check everything, especially the things that you yourself did not complete, just to make sure everything was done correctly and catch any potential mistakes from others. The patients health and safety is the most important thing, everything that we do has to be for the benefit of the patient. I feel like you were able to take away a lot of knowledge from your experience and I hope that it benefits you well in the clinical setting or other simulations in the future. Keep up the hard work!