Wednesday, June 15, 2011

I am in Paperwork Hell

As the excitement of my first clinical rotation wears off, I am staring down the massive pile of paperwork that I need to turn in by Friday afternoon. I realized that in all the excitement of the day, I really didn’t get a thorough assessment of my patient. In fact, I didn’t get much of an assessment at all. Most of the information I did get was copied from the chart. I can probably fudge most of it for this one, since it is the first care plan we are to turn in, and it is more of a “practice” one than a strictly graded one but I am a little disappointed in myself that I didn’t get the assessment I should have.


All of this makes me realize that while I have come a long way in the self confidence department, actually talking to some people, and getting in there and doing things rather than just being a fly on the wall, I still have a ways to go before I become who I need to. The assertive, confident student nurse.

So now I will get back to this mountain of paperwork, and figure out what I need to do to make sure the next time I am in the hospital, I actually talk to and assess my patient rather than relying on the chart.


3 comments:

  1. When I was in nursing school our instructor sent us all back out after post conference to do a real assessment, because we had all been too shy to do it.
    One of the students did Hohman's sign (some hospitals now frown on this) and discovered a DVT. It really was a DVT. Found by a first year nursing student on her second day of clinical. It went a long way to convince us that we really could do something to help the patients.
    Susan Peterson

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  2. Girl no worries, that sounds exactly like my first clinical at the hospital last semester and we were expected to turn in a 5-8 page care plan on someone we talked to approximately 30 minutes. My partner and I went up to the unit a couple days later and looked up the patient's history because she was transferred to another floor and was still active in the computer. We got a lot more info and walked away with a great grade. Hope you do well and get your work done.

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  3. Teaching has LOADS of paperwork too. I didn't know about the nursing paperwork until I read this posting. Good luck with all of it and your assessments and paperwork.

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