YKYW - Nursing Student Blog

Last week was my first experience in a pediatric unit. Compared to the hospital where I spent my first clinical rotations, this one is amazing. I wouldn’t mind working here. This is the first time I’ve seen nurses on the floor who were excited about what they were doing. My experience with my patient was pretty emotional, but it turned out to be a very good thing.

This hospital is only about 20 minutes from my new place, and my next rotation is less than 3 miles from my condo. The short commute is one of the reasons I wanted to move to this area. Last semester, rotations started at 6:45a and it took me an hour to get there. This semester, our rotations start at 5:45a. That’s way too early.

The first skills check-off of the semester was this morning. We had to do SQ injections. My orders required mixing insulin, so it wasn’t too bad. I did practice with a chicken, but it was pretty messy. In the end, one of those stress ball things worked really well for me.

For awhile, I was really struggling when it came to actually inserting the needle. I couldn’t seem to get it to go all the way in no matter how hard I tried. In the end, I realized my problem was that I wasn’t following through with my wrist motion. Once I started working on my follow-through, it was a piece of cake!

Now it’s time to start preparing for the first lecture test of my second semester of nursing school. The test is next week. IM injections to are next in skills lab.