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.