3/6 Journal for PostPartum

Questions

What were your responsibilities or duties this week?
-Follow Nurse


What new knowledge or skill did you learn this week?
-How a discharge works


What was the best thing that happened at the site this week?
-Actually got to see patients
-Saw a discharge

What was the worst thing that happened at the site this week?
- It was really quiet.
-There was not a lot to do


This week was FAIR.

Experience Record

Technology observed:



Diagnostic procedures observed:
None of the patients I saw were diagnosed with anything which is really good because it would be bad if new mothers get sick.


Therapeutic procedures observed:
I saw one mother was given some pain killers. They were not a very high dose because high doses might affect the baby if the mother breastfeeds.


Diseases/disorders observed:
There were no diseases or disorders there. Things would have been really bad if there were.


Medical terminology encountered:
Discharge it is when  the nurse release the patient to go recover at home.

Journal

Post Partum from what I saw was a straight hall with rooms on one side. It right next to the Nursery and L&D, which makes lots of sense when one thinks about it. The floor was clear and there were some family members that walked through the unit. There were also some mothers that were walking too but they were all down the hall. There was not a lot of equipment that was laying around other than the computers and such.
I saw only three nurses so I didn't see a lot of interaction between them. My nurse always wore gloves when she had to interact with the mothers or babies which makes sense because both of their bodies are in fragile states at the moment.
I learned that a mother gets booster shots after the baby's birth that 1) help her from getting sick and 2) can transfer to the baby through breastfeeding which helps build their immune systems. I got to see a discharge of a mother which was kind of interesting. There is lots of paper work and the nurse practically stated everything that I read in the questions packet which was slightly scary on how confident and swiftly she said it. I mentioned that to her and she just said it was because she has been saying it so many time that it just gets ingrained.

Over all, the experiance was not bad per say. It was just a bit boring because my nurse finished all the check ups a little before we got there. What I got to see was better than nothing so I won't say it was terrible.

2/27 Journal for Nursery

Questions

What were your responsibilities or duties this week?
-Follow Nurse


What new knowledge or skill did you  learn this week?
-Learned about Hyperbilirubinemia


What was the best thing that happened at the site this week?
-Listened to some jokes of the nurses


What was the worst thing that happened at the site this week?
-Did not do anything
-Saw no patients or babies

This week was BAD.

Experience Record

Technology observed:



Diagnostic procedures observed:
I saw no patients or babies.


Therapeutic procedures observed:
I saw no patients or babies


Diseases/disorders observed:
I saw no patients or babies.


Medical terminology encountered:
Hyperbilirubinemia is a condition  where there is a high level of Bilirubin in the blood stream. It is also known as Jaundice.

Journal

The nursery is surprisingly smaller than I thought. Its entrance is hidden in the middle of a hallway which was odd. The rooms themselves are also rather small. Everything is pushed to the walls and there were two island tables in the center of the main nursery. There were three sinks around the place, which makes sense because babies has weak immune systems and hand washing is the best prevention. There were five nurses there and no babies. All of them were working on charting and such on the computers.
As stated, there were about five nurses in the nursery and two more in the nursery's ICU. All of them were working at their computers charting. The checks and feedings were done right before we arrived. The nurses were rather quiet but every now and then they would have some joke going on. They got more chatty the longer I was there but I was mainly ignored.
I got into the nursery with the head nurse of the place. She tried to find something for me to do or observe but since everything was done before, there was nothing for me to do. She did tell me that they had a baby that was at risk for Hyperbilirubinemia. She logged me into a computer and set me to look up what it was with the baby's chart as reference.
My time there was pretty boring. They did not have babies in the normal nursery so there was no one to really keep my attention. I learned about Baby Jaundice and that it is bad. Though it was a coincidence that just one hour before that in my Anatomy class, my teach went over Bilirubin and the effect it has on babies, which leads to jaundice. I did have a short chuckle at that but over all, nothing happened.