Frustrations, updates, etc

I’m done with my med-surg clinical—I still have to write a rogerian paper and journal entry about my last patient, and I’d rather stick a needle in my eye, but I’m done with the actual being-at-the-hospital part. My remaining two rotations this semester require FAR less time and and paperwork. This paperwork has taken as much time over again as the time on the floor…12 hours or so, all told. It bites. I am, therefore, ecstatic to be moving on. I’m pleased I had this rotation first, because I wouldn’t like to be facing it later in the semester. So I’m done with elderly patients and have little ones the rest of the time, which is too bad because I really like the elderly. Here’s why (this is just a cobbled-together example):

Patient: “What? What?”

Me: [Repeats question, very loudly]

Patient: [Crankily] “Well, you have to speak up.”

Me: [Next question, later, me, in loud voice]

Patient: [Jumps back] “Agh! You don’t need to yell, honey. I’m right here.”

OR the patient repeatedly asks for orientation (what am I doing here? where are we going?), and then when you try to get ahead of the curve and preemptively tell them, they say, again edgily, “I KNOW that. You already TOLD me that.”

I just think the elderly are more entertaining than children, but we’ll see.

I’m frustrated because a student in my clinical keeps lying to get special treatment, and it works because she’s SPECTACULARLY good at it. It takes awhile to realize she’s a pathological liar. It’s taken my class a few semesters, so I can’t get too worked up about my CI not noticing in 4 weeks, I suppose. Still, she lied blatantly and I confronted her about it with my CI (integrity in nursing is important to me), and she lied so well to get out of it that *I* ended up getting chewed out (for putting the lying student in a position of having to defend herself). I need to let it go. I handled the situation appropriately by directly and professionally confronting the relevant parties, but I can’t control the outcome. It still makes my blood boil. This student get all kinds of special accommodations for mysterious reasons (eg, she has to sit on the front row because she can’t hear, yet oddly she can hear lung and heart sounds just fine) and brags outright that she gets to take tests alone in a room where she can look at her notes. I do realize that her conduct is NONE of my business, but the rest of us work so hard to do well, and with integrity…my class is actually concerned that she is dangerous to patients because she gets through school by cheating. Bah. Nothin’ I can do. Must distract self. Life has never been fair, and it isn’t now! Big shocker there. I shouldn’t have said anything. I have never been good about failing to speak up when I’m very concerned about things, but nursing school isn’t such a great arena for trying to speak out for the right thing.

On a happier note, I finally have a job interview at the local hospital. One of my teachers works there and put in a good word for me. So wish me luck!