Clinicals: Day 1

Today was day one of my clinicals at the hospital. I have clinicals once a week for the rest of the semester. I had to wake up at 5am, which was absolute torture because I didn't get home from work until about 23:45 (I'm going to start writing military time because I need to get used to it.) last night. I didn't get to bed until after midnight. So basically I got less then 5 hours of sleep. TORTURE! I got ready, and then went to starbucks to get my drug (caffeine) fix. I felt a bit better once I got to the hospital, but not much better because it was still DARK out!!! Around 7:45 my clinical group got on the floor and I found out that my patient that I was supposed to work with had gone down for a SBFT (Small Bowel Follow Through). The nurse said that she should be back shortly. Well, the patient didn't come back for about 3 hours! I felt so behind! But I did get to do a bit of reading up on my patient and finding out what she had, what her history was, etc. If I haven't clarified already, because of HIPAA, which is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, I will be saying very little about the patient's condition. Finally when the patient came back I got to perform a little bit of an assessment on her, but I felt pretty bad because she looked exhausted from going through the procedure. She was a very nice woman. I am really hoping that next week I can perform more of a assessment on a patient and hopefully be able to pass meds as well.