sassenach Posted August 13, 2020 Share Posted August 13, 2020 How is the fall looking for you all? My nursing education is moving forward. I'm about to start semester 2 out of 4. We just got our clinical assignments yesterday and I'm thrilled that we actually have clinicals to go to. Hoping and praying that the hospitals stay open all semester. I'm currently working on finishing my clinical hours for the spring semester. We just had our skills check-off yesterday. My first time on campus since March. It was so great to see my classmates in person. I feel like I've processed all the stages of grief about losing the nursing school experience that I had planned for. At this point, I accept that everything may go to hell. All we can do is just keep swimming! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmandaVT Posted August 13, 2020 Share Posted August 13, 2020 I reached the halfway mark in my math master's degree this summer! Technically, I have one more paper to write and then I'm there. I just have one class in Orton Gillingham instruction and my internship left for my Special Ed. program and am hoping to finish by January. Everything moved online in the spring and will be online for fall as well. I feel like my brain is still recovering from my summer classes. My next classes start the weekend of 9/25 so I have over a month. In-service starts on 8/24 for my district, so I basically have one week off before getting fully back into the swing of things. @sassenach are you in a location where cases are relatively low right now? I hope you're able to get through your clinicals too! Congrats on getting back on campus - I miss seeing my cohort in person!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sassenach Posted August 13, 2020 Author Share Posted August 13, 2020 (edited) 49 minutes ago, AmandaVT said: I reached the halfway mark in my math master's degree this summer! Technically, I have one more paper to write and then I'm there. I just have one class in Orton Gillingham instruction and my internship left for my Special Ed. program and am hoping to finish by January. Everything moved online in the spring and will be online for fall as well. I feel like my brain is still recovering from my summer classes. My next classes start the weekend of 9/25 so I have over a month. In-service starts on 8/24 for my district, so I basically have one week off before getting fully back into the swing of things. @sassenach are you in a location where cases are relatively low right now? I hope you're able to get through your clinicals too! Congrats on getting back on campus - I miss seeing my cohort in person!! Nope. I'm in California. Half of the hospitals (maybe more than half?) aren't letting students in this fall. It's all very tenuous. Edited August 13, 2020 by sassenach Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wintermom Posted August 15, 2020 Share Posted August 15, 2020 I'm taking a graduate course in statistics this fall toward my graduate degree in program evaluation. It will be on-line, though there is supposed to be a live class each week, which I'm happy about. I've been doing a lot of review this summer so I'll be up to speed with stats. I haven't taken a stats class in about 25 years. The review is going really well. I'm feeling pretty confident about the course. I'm also volunteering to complete a program evaluation for a brain injury services agency. It's going very well. I'm just about ready for the data collection phase, my favourite part! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirty ethel rackham Posted September 28, 2020 Share Posted September 28, 2020 Nice to see the updates. Here's mine: I started back in clinicals at the beginning of August. I'm at the hospital 4 days a week. I was switched to a hospital in an urban area that is a hot spot for COVID. Fortunately, they have adequate PPE and our department is fully supportive of taking precautions. We are allowed one N95 mask a week and we wear a procedure mask over that and a face shield. We also wear an isolation gown (the more cloth-like ones, not the plastic ones.) Since we are in close contact with a patient for a good 30 - 40 minutes at a time and there is significant community spread in this area, we treat everyone as potentionally COVID positive. Even though I am not supposed to scan known positive or PUI patients, there are always the Schrodinger's Cat patients that come in through the ER or through outpatient. (They both have COVID and don't have COVID without test results 😄) The inpatients with that are Positive or PUI are scanned portably by the techs. I actually feel safer at the hospital with all our precautions than I do out in public with people in my town who act like there is no virus. A few days before I was to return to clinicals, I found out that my old site didn't want me back because I was "too slow and taking up too much of their time." (Hello! Student here. There is no way I'm going to be as fast as the techs with 20 years experience.) That was a blow to my ego and a shock since all my reviews prior to the shutdowns were very positive and I was working on a game plan with my clinical instructor to help improve my speed. I did find out later that they are under a ton of stress due to getting bought out by another hospital system that really put the hammer down since COVID. Lots of productivity pressure. So, with my confidence at an all-time low, I was sent into a hospital where the instructor is intimidating as all get out. She barely acknowledged my existence the first week. Most of the techs speak Russian and they hardly spoke any English my first 2 weeks there. They thought I was stupid because I wouldn't realize that they were speaking to me and they often had to repeat themselves. I basically tuned out their conversations because I couldn't understand them and wouldn't realize that they had switched to English. I wasn't getting the benefit of learning about cases because they didn't discuss them in English. My two saving graces were my fellow student who was with me (he was there before the COVID shut down so he knew the ropes) and one tech who didn't speak Russian who took me under her wing. Things have been improving in the last 2 weeks. The Russian techs have taken more of an interest in my training and speak English in front of me more often. (I guess bringing in good tea and muffins helped win them over 😋.) My fellow student has moved to a different site so we are no longer in competition for scan time. And I had a conversation with my CI about the progress I need to be making. I am finally starting to earn the comps I need to pass this rotation. The patients here are interesting. I really see the inequities in health care in this country. So many people living with serious health conditions that would have been treatable if they had better access to care. We see them much further along in the disease process. Some of them are a trip. Last week, I was scanning an elderly man (inpatient) who kept insisting that he had a meeting to go to. He likely had a UTI and was confused. He kept sitting up and looking for his keys. (He was wearing a hospital gown and nothing else.) He ended up getting out of bed and accusing me of stealing his pants and his keys. I had to get help to get him back in bed. He looked at me and said "You tryin' to get shot or somethin'?" I'm like "Whoa, I'm not in Kansas anymore!" All I could think was "Where you hiding a gun in that gown?" and "I hope he doesn't hurt himself. I don't want to get in trouble." I am so exhausted all the time. Between the long commute, the PPE (so incredibly hot), the stress of trying to get good at something with a long learning curve, thus dealing with failure on a regular basis, and the challenging social environment, I am getting close to burn-out. We had started out doing 36 hours a week to try to catch up on clinical hours. Fortunately, we will be moving back to 3 days a week - 24 hours a week. I can start working out more and scheduling doctor's appointments and stuff. I will be moving to a new site (a "bougie" Maternal Fetal Medicine clinic in a wealthy suburb) in November. Since we moved all our fall classes into the summer semester and did them online, we only have one lab on campus this semester. We will be back to a full academic load in addition to clinicals in January. We will be continue the hybrid format ... lecture content online and lab in person at school. I don't know how I am going to handle being back in study mode! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wintermom Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 @dirty ethel rackham Thanks for the wonderful update! What a roller coaster of emotions and experiences you've been having! My own update is much more tame in comparison. I had one of those weird thoughts one gets at 1 am; mine is that I'd REALLY like to continue with grad studies and pursue my PhD. I simply love research and being associated with an academic institute, with the flexibility to work within the community as well. I think I've discovered the perfect fit within my current university that combines my 2 interests. Before I could second guess myself, I e-mailed a prof in the program, whom I've met and who I'll be taking a course with this January. Hopefully she won't notice that I wrote the e-mail at 2am. 😉 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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