Thursday, August 26, 2010

Introducing myself

I thought I could tell you a little about myself.  I am currently married for the second time.  My former spouse and I had one son who is now 26 and just got married.  My husband has two boys - one is 21 and the youngest is 18 and still living with us at home.  His wife - their mom- died in a car accident when they were 9 and 6. 

I like to do things outside but with school beginning again I don't get out much.  I work part time (20-24 hours/week).  I try to get in an early morning run each day and succeed at least 5 days/week.

I finally feel like I will survive this semester.  That first day or so is so overwhelming especially when I was looking at the whole semester and the corresponding assignments.  Once I got them all calendared I just look at one day at a time - it's easier and doable.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Class Begins

I'm new at this so try to be a bit patient with me :)

 I am just beginning course work toward a Masters Degree in Teaching Nursing.  This is both an exciting and overwhelming experience.  There is a large amount of new information to assimilate and then figure out how to put it to the best use.  I took a moment to put together a calendar where I listed the due dates for all things required for my three classes.  How will I ever get it all accomplished?

 I have been a nurse for just over 10 years.  The majority of my experience has been in the operating room.  I find I enjoy the fact that I have one patient - and only one patient - who gets my undivided attention.  I have just recently changed jobs and am working in endoscopy - scoping colons and esophagus/stomach/duodenum.  Still only one patient at a time. 
 
We use technology almost exclusively.  In fact the power went out the other day and we hardly knew what to do until the generator kicked on and our systems were all up and running again.  The doc's can access, electronically, patient records they have generated along with records from many other sources.  There are times when the information has not been recorded electronically and we try to recreate information based on the information given to us by the patient.  We also use technology to create a hard copy report to send home with each patient along with a copy sent to their referring physician.  (I suspect that eventually we'll send electronic reports to the referring physician.)  We have also accessed web information and created information sheets concerning the different problems we find in patients with suggestions on how to make lifestyle changes, different drug choices and what the drugs do, and often include support groups for some of the diseases.

All of our  in office communications are done via e-mail.  Our schedules are posted on our email sites and we use an electronic computer based company for our time cards which we can access from home if needed.

Since this is my first attempt at blogging I may have overdone things - given you too much information - or maybe it's really boring - I suspect with some experience I'll get better at this.