I passed my first test!!

Last Tuesday turned out to be a great day! I had my first Theory test and made an 88!!! The class average was a 74 and boy, oh boy, was it a hard test! Our instructors had warned us of that....they said nursing school tests are unlike any other, and they were definitely not lying! It's just a lot of applied questions...you have to know your stuff in order to even understand what they are asking. Getting a good grade was definitely encouraging.

The day before, on Monday, we had to be "checked off" on taking accurate vital signs by our clinical instructor. That was a piece of cake! I think I've got temp, pulse, respiratory rate, and blood pressure taken care of, which is good since they are beyond basic nursing skills!

In our Skills class, we got to play with our needles for the first time. Yeah! So fun! They have these squishy rubbery pads you inject into, called injectapads. We practiced drawing up meds from vials and injecting with proper technique. Gosh, do I feel sorry for our patients who agree to let us stick them for the first time! But I tell you what, I will make my patient think I've done it a million times! :)

The funniest part of the week was Thursday night when 5 girls from our clinical group came over to study. We decided we needed to focus on injections since we have a super important evaluation coming up on the 19th. One of the things we have to show our instructors is that we can properly find all of the sites for injections using certain anatomical landmarks. In order to learn it correctly, you need to practice on each other, right? Well, here we are, me and 5 college-aged girls in the middle of my living room pointing and feeling each other for various injection sites...Jason comes walking in the room and gets the biggest smile on his face, he thinks he's in heaven!! Needless to say, Jason has volunteered our house for all future study sessions.

So what's up for this week?
Tomorrow I head to North Hills hospital to officially begin my clinical training. Yikes!! Things are really going to start picking up now but I'm so excited about what I'm going to see and learn. Our dosage calculation exam is Wednesday so please keep me in your prayers as I have only 2 chances to make a 90 or above on the test and continue in the program...I'm confident that I'll do fine but just hope that those test jitters don't get the best of me!

I'm charging my camera up tonight so I can get some pictures tomorrow as I head off to the hospital in my swanky uniform. I'll post them on here as soon as I can figure out how to do that! Have a good week!