Reflection On Clinical Experience

My most beneficial learning experience happened on my most recent day of clinical. I had two patients. Both would have been a lot of work by themselves but having been assigned both of them proved to be a challenge. The first patient, who was the more intense patient, came in because he had bilateral masses. After being in the MICU for 2 days, he also tested positive for influenza A. There also the matter of an unreported motor vehicle accident that occurred prior to his admission. All of Patient 1’s issues combined required my preceptor and I to plan our day to make sure that he was well taken care of. He was on 9 drips and he had been given some paralytics. We had to continuously monitor his drips to ensure that he wouldn’t run out of his

That was fun and exciting. I’m not used to something so fast paced and emergent. We ended having two calls that night/early morning. I got to see how all the different members of the team collaborated and worked with each save each patient’s life. I got to see another side of nursing that I hadn’t seen before. Since my preceptor has been a nurse for 15 years and has a lot of experience, she was the one advising the doctor on what treatment was needed and that it needed to be done as soon as possible rather than waiting to see how she would recover from

I felt a mix of emotions before my first two clinical days. I was really nervous. Most of those feelings stemmed from my lack of experience in an ICU setting and what it took to prioritize my patients as a nurse during our clinical rotations.

On my first day of clinical, I felt excited, nervous, and prepared. I did not know exactly what I expected but I definitely thought at least some things would be easy. I thought it would be a lot similar to my time spent on medical-surgical units, but it wasn’t. The patients in the MICU really are “intense”. Even though I knew this beforehand, I still wasn’t expecting the level of severity that I saw with these patients.

I thought I had my time management skills under control. Once again, I was wrong. While in the hospital things constantly move fast; patients are discharged to the floor and orders are changed within moments notice. It can be difficult to time everything correctly so that I can perform head to toe assessments, make sure that medications are given on time, give baths if needed, etc.

There were days when are patients were easier. We had what my preceptor called “nursing home patients”. This meant that they weren’t very intense care while and they mostly needed medications to be given to them and for activities of daily living to be