With finally completing eighty hours of long, tiring, adventurous and experience-filled nursing prac, comes an abrupt, yet beautiful end to semester one.
My second week was much more eventful than the first. I wasn’t only taking peoples’ vitals and observing like I had done in the first week, but I was assisting the doctors and nurses, as well as conducting procedures by the end of the week. This all added together to make my time on placement incredibly successful and enjoyable. I learnt a lot of stuff that is near impossible to learn in the restrictions of a classroom – some of which I was yet to even learn at uni!
Working in such a professional environment, I soon learnt to deal with a diverse group of people who had a whole range of different conditions, injuries and cultural barriers. In one instant, a mentally challenged, middle-aged male came into the medical centre claiming that he had been mugged by a gang and that they had stolen his highly addictive medication. He had wounds all over his arms and legs, but with them only being superficial, the doctor and nurse concluded that they were self-inflicted and that the man was there purely to obtain more medication. This was one of the more dark moments that we had to deal with, and while there were only a few, the intensity was drowned out by the sound of a four year old screaming into my ear as his mother and I held his down while the nurse pulled stitches from his lip after a severe Tonka truck accident.
But anyway, after all the chaos and fun has come to a close, I’m back on campus now, and it feels like I never left! It’s really great to see everyone again and moving back in was a breeze (especially when my partner, Renee, was here to help). It also helped that pretty much all of my belongings were still out here from last semester – the only things I needed to pack were my clothes and my computer! My new timetable has turned out…alright. Everything was crammed neatly into the first three days, apart from one tiny lab session that I absolutely have to attend every Friday afternoon.
All in all, it’s looking to be another awesome semester at CSU. I’ll keep you guys updated and let you know as soon as something happens!
