From XKCD, one of the greatest comics ever.

As seen on an AllNurses.com post, and apparently poached from a new (to me) blog - Those Emergency Blues:

C subsect. 2) Fine, I'm getting back to work, I swears!

I realized it while I was writing out notes for compartment syndrome.

I got the giggles... which was bad, because I was in the silent study room (and it was actually silent for a change, even with 5 people in there)

And then it got worse. I started crying tears of lol from holding in my giggles to a gentle semi-silent nose laugh, which resulted in me choking on it and making a huge reverberating SNORRRRK sound. I felt the eye daggers fly at me and figured I'd better leave the room to get straightened out. It was just as well because my coffee needed a refill.

For some reason I found my notation of compartment syndrome absolutely and ridiculously hilarious as I transcribed it - using the very same descriptors as the text--

"COMPARTMENT SYNDROME: Occurs when the muscle is swollen and hard on palpation and the pain is deep... throbbing... unrelenting... inside the tight fascia. "

OMG, I might as well be writing some torrid ladyporn romance novel.

I am officially going nuts. Thank you and good night.

Well OBVIOUSLY we have a WHISTLEBLOWER up in Sweden. He's raidin' ya government documents, he's snatchin' yo internal emails, try'na post 'em on WikiLeaks so y'all need to hide ya government officials, hide ya diplomats, and hide ya state secrets, cuz they're releasin' info on errbody up in here.

You don't have to come and confess, cuz Interpol's lookin for you on unrelated sexual assault charges and we gon' find you. Sarah Palin says we will hunt you like Al Qaeda and we gon' FIND you. So you can run and tell THAT, Julian Assange.

This made me giggle, especially in light of the paper I'm writing this week.

Thanks for the awesome feedback on my conference summary, you guys made me feel like I was heading in the right direction. In fact, last Friday I had a faculty meeting about setting up a big pilot project for our school. I don't want to speak to it too much just yet but it would be very exciting. I met with some 4th year instructors and they gave it a huge thumbs up.

Re: L&D.... thanks to availability heuristics, I now fear for every couple in their reproductive years. If you see a crazed third year nursing student running down the street yelling about folic acid, teratogens, abruptio placentae, or the importance of colostrum... rest assured that the police already know about me and have likely sent the squad car to take me home again.

Sociological Images is a really interesting blog that I found purely by accident and now enjoy regularly. The discourse is particularly engaging and thoughtful. Actually, that's not really something I'm used to - most of the medbloggers out there have a steady supply of Angry Layperson Commenteurs who rage unintelligibly against any post they might make. So it's nice to see comments that are as educational as the post itself.

In other Interesting Things Found While Googling Research Topics, a fun diversion to learn about all kinds of different biases can be found here. Be prepared to win any argument by saying, "Well, sure, but your logic is flawed, due to the ________ fallacy."

You're welcome. ;)

Have a great week everybody!

Also - you're looking at a Couch to 5K graduate! Over the course of my C25K experience, I have run more than 19 hours, totalling 73 miles, and burned approximately 8100 calories (yep, I track every run!). I can run for over 30 minutes without stopping. I don't run very fast, but I run. I do get bored as hell, and I'm looking forward to running out on the trails next spring. BIG thanks to NurseXY for inspiring me to start :) When I looked at the C25K training plan in those first weeks I could never have imagined running (and enjoying it!) like I do now.

Overheard in class:

"Why can't I do IV pushes as an RN?"

"You can, you just need the certification. It's a short inservice."

"Well, what's the point of being an RN if I have to get certified after?"

______________________________________


This was one of the students who was profoundly baffled by the concept of IV infusion.

I hate to break it to her but if she resists ANY competency training beyond the basic BScN she's going to find her career path pretty, uh, nonexistent.

I find it interesting how I've moved beyond focusing on specific skills of care and started "big picturing" a LOT more. Is that by design? Is this a Third Year goal? Or am I just so annoyed with how small-minded some of my classmates seem that I am focused on the overall concept of nursing to give myself strength to make it through another round of microcosmical questions?

Or maybe I'm just going about this all wrong.

Just kidding.

I got some spam email from a company that wants me to advertise their stuff for free. They linked an ebook and I was perusing it with a smirk.

Then I happened upon this golden advice for nurses:

Listen carefully. Sometimes physicians can give orders so quickly and it could be hard to keep up. If you don't understand, make them slow down and go over it, but don't second-guess the doctors. Part of your nursing job involves carrying out the orders of the physician, even if you feel another course of action might be best.

Words from the pros, people. Your professional opinion is worthless. DO NOT QUESTION THE PHYSICIAN.

Now fetch me a cigarette, the chart, and a hot toddy, stat! And pick up my dry cleaning!

Well, sometimes.

I really do apologize for the dearth of posts in the last couple of months (wow, has it really been that long?). I was/am still dealing with some personal stuff that I'd rather not air on the interweb but school-wise everything is going very well! We finished off the second semester in mid-April and I did decently, still hopefully in the running for a second year scholarship although I lost my tenuous grip on Dean's list. But I'm okay with that - the semester was intense!

Oh wow, our last class in Physiology was very exciting! Note to future students - do not plan to have a 3 hour class on Friday from 2 to 5. It feels more like a 6 hour class. She was about 6 or 7 months pregnant and I'm sure she was as glad to be done as we were. She was a great prof, really knowledgable, but she had the most unfortunate monotone voice. I ended up being conditioned to fall asleep at the sound of her lecturing :)

The Micro test was the hardest of all the finals. I studied like I'd studied for her previous tests but unfortunately she amped the difficulty like 35% for the final. It was really hard and I came out of there feeling like I'd been punched in the gut. There were short answer questions on there that I didn't see coming and unfortunately a zillion questions on the actions of antimicrobial drugs. Luckily I "diagnosed" the short answer infection correctly as malaria and was able to answer all the related questions semi-correctly. Yup, it was a challenge. Of course, going through the class had me convinced that I either previously or currently was infected with any number of terrible organisms. Like diptheria or rubella! Scarlet fever anyone?

Psych, Communications, and Nursing 175 were just more of the same as last semester. Kind of fluffy, no real hard knowledge required. Nursing was mostly regurgitated factoids from Potter & Perry that anyone who had been awake during clinical should know - what is the proper positioning of the BP cuff? Where can you clamp the Sp02 monitor? Mrs. Brown looks like she's about to keel over, what do you do? And some of the more tricky memorized parts, such as bed positioning and the according names.

I actually enjoyed Communications more than I thought I would. I didn't really learn anything - does anyone actually have moments in those classes where they're like, ohhhh, now I understand human behaviour? The prof was a lot of fun and very spot-on in her statements. She also refused to play politically correct so we got to hear some really good stories about life as a nurse in a hospital and running a nursing home. The best part about that class was that I made some really good friends who have been pretty much awesome in helping me out with my personal life. Heart you guys! To celebrate the (almost) end of the first year, piles of nursing students went out drinking and dancing. We did a lot of fun things together in a week that will forever be known as Nursing Students Gone Wild, Parts 1, 2, and 3. I'd have to recommend that to every student as a way to end the school year! It felt so good, after a month of locked in the library studying for hours, to let go and just be 24 again. Or 19, in most cases :) One night I got a lot of free drinks for a variety of reasons - first, I got socked in the eye by a guy giving his friend a vigorous ILOVEYOUMAN hug, and all my friends ordered him to buy me a drink immediately, and thereafter mostly by guys trying to get with my beautiful, and single, friend Tina from our clinical group. Not that it worked but I appreciated the gesture! ;) We also tried out our nursing student pickup moves. These must be as old as time. We'd tell anyone who would listen that we were first year students and would subsequently impress them with our brachial-pulse-finding skills, and tell them they were experiencing tachycardia. Even if they weren't. More free drinks for Tina and I. There you go, you learned it from UgRN first :)

On May 5th we started our third and final semester of Year 1. It was a condensed Psych 105 class that was the follow up to Psych 104. 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, 3 weeks long. Actually, I just wrote the final exam a week ago.

Boy, do I have a story about this instructor. Maybe it's a requisite that psych instructors need to be batshit crazy - you tell me!

So on the first day I sat in the front because I was kind of late and the class was packed. So I sit within "saliva distance" of this very enunciative man and listened to him regale the class with tales of his residency in gynecology and how NOBODY should go into gynecology as it is clearly the worst field imaginable.

Nursing students present exchange uncomfortable glances.

So, okay. He's a physician who left medicine to pursue psychology. I could see it, and at any rate if he didn't like labia that was his own problem.

Then he proposed that we change the class time from 0900 to 0830 because, and I quote, "the lineup is shorter at Tim Hortons and I'll have a better chance at getting a parking spot." Uh, right. Well I have a problem with that because I work evenings from 2-10 and any half hour in the morning that I get, I'm going to cherish. Also hanging out downtown for yet another half hour before work isn't really appealing. Also I don't drive, I don't give a rip about your parking spot or your coffee, and this just might be the most self-centered thing I've ever heard a prof say.

"Does anyone strongly oppose this change?" (Note use of the words 'STRONGLY oppose'. Because minor opposition will just have to suck it up, princess!)

Nursing students present exchange uncomfortable glances.

Then, suddenly, a hand shoots in the air! A single, stalwart hand that, yes, strongly opposes self-serving suggestions by college professors whom we are paying to listen to!

I look up. OH MY GOD IT'S MY HAND! I turn bright pink but I keep my hand up. He looks at me with contempt and suddenly there's more hands out there. Yes, more evening shift workers who don't want to come in earlier and make their days even longer. Whew!

"Please step outside so we can discuss your excuses, uh, reasons."

We then form in a semicircle of determination while he goes through us, one by one, trying to discredit our reasons for not wanting to change the class time. Because the class time on the roster is the one we signed up for, we say, and because we work late to put ourselves through this class. Not that we should have had to defend ourselves at all. But I was still bright pink from being the Class Dissenter.

"Can't you change your shifts?"

Uh, WHAT? Change our shifts so you can get coffee? The shifts I planned around this class? Can I get a hell no?

Thus was the start to our semester.

More epic tales of Dr. Uncongeniality to follow :)

Chief bylaw complaint of the day:

Somebody broke into my apartment and made their dog rape my dog! She's only 9 months old!

Response: comfort citizen who is hysterical over her immorality and ensuing canine abortion. Refer to police department.

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

Overheard in class yesterday while discussing cell phone use while driving:

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