Amazing…

/in /by

I am sorry we ended so abruptly in class. Thank you to the last three groups for speeding your presentations up to get everyone in! I cannot express how proud I am of you and your presentations – your creativity, diverse approaches, and overall impressive efforts made for an educational and fun last day together.

Housekeeping: 1. Please send me your Animoto, Google Presentations, Videos, PowerPoints, VoiceThreads, etc that you did. 2. Email me if you would like to meet from 8-9am or 10-11am tomorrow, Friday, or next week. 3. Email me if you DO NOT want me to share your work…. I think I see an innovations at CI blog about your presentations in the near future! 4. Don’t forget SRTs – just takes a few minutes and is appreciated by all of your faculty.

...to the future

I look forward to seeing you all this Friday to celebrate your achievements! You are an amazing group of students, who I expect great things from and bright lights ahead for all of you. Hugs, Jaime

Last Post!!!

/in /by

When I reflect on this journey, I feel overwhelmed at how much time and energy has been spent working towards this final class of nursing school. When I started this program, 3 years ago, I never anticipated how nursing would affect my life, my relationships and my sanity. I have made amazing lifelong friendships and learned SO much about myself. It has drastically changed my life and I am so happy and excited for what the future will bring (I am also terrified). Every different rotation through each different hospital has affected my nursing experience and shaped what kind of nurse I hope to be one day. Nursing has given me so much hope and respect for the amazing patients, fellow medical staff and the families that I meet. I am so grateful for the wonderful educators who have always supported me and my colleagues through the good times and the bad.

10849991_10153421922606110_8558585129157947749_nNursing is not always the most glamorous job, but it is very rewarding. There is not a better feeling than when a patient reaches a long sought after goal towards bettering their health status or knowing that you have made a difference in a patient or their families lives. I believe that my time in nursing school has really shaped my philosophy of nursing which is however I find my patient….I hope to make their life better. I mean that in the sense of better either through educating them about something that will positively affect their life or making them more comfortable by providing a bed bath or simply listening to what they have to say and making them feel important.

I am so excited about this journey and cannot wait to see where it takes myself and my fellow peers. We have all worked so hard, made sacrifices and learned SO much. Thank you so much for such a beautiful experience and I can’t wait to see everyone at graduation! :)

 

We Made It!

/in /by

Class Photo

These last three years have been the most difficult and happiest time of my life. If I had the chance to go back in time, I wouldn’t do it any different. It feels like we just started this semester, but the time has flown by so quickly and this week we are all getting pinned! I remember starting this program and sitting in class wondering if I was cut out for the work and the challenges I would face. It is still crazy to think about all the hard work I’ve put in to get to this point in my life, but I have managed…somehow! BUT we are all living proof to future nursing students that getting through a nursing school is possible! We all came into this program as strangers, but now we leave as a family. As graduation is just next week, I have to say that this is bittersweet time. It will be sad to be saying goodbye to the class I’ve seen every week since this program started. However, I believe the education and experiences we’ve gained in our nursing program has prepared us to be great nurses in whatever specialty we choose. I am excited to see where all of us end up in our nursing careers. I will truly miss our class, our faculty, and our school! It has been one amazing journey and I am excited to begin my career as a RN! We have finally made it!

Hello world!

/in /by

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Protected: Final Reflection

/in /by

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Time to Spread Wings and Fly

/in /by

Looking Toward the Future

For the last two weeks I have been reflecting on my experience, as a third year bachelor’s prepared nursing student. There are many moments within this long awaited journey in which I have seen and felt a drastic growth since my first year. More than ever I feel adequately prepared to enter my professional nursing career and see myself succeeding. My experience at CI in the nursing program has validated my goal to continue to pursue higher education and become a nurse practitioner. This semester really brought everything full circle from my friends, understanding the lecture content, participating in undergraduate research to being able to see myself as a nurse and no longer as a nursing student.

I enjoyed this semester because I felt competent in caring for critically ill patients and their family. The focus of this semester was more about learning to handle various forms of family dynamics while implementing high quality patient care. I have seen how family can have a major impact on a patient’s care and end of life. This experience has opened the door within my own family to talk about situations such as end of life care, which has something that was never been discussed before. It allowed the opportunity for my parents and siblings to become much closer and for that I am very grateful.

In clinical, I was also able to utilize every skill I have learned from my first semester towards now and see the impact it can have on those who I cared for. It almost seems surreal when the patient and the family you are caring for tell you that their hospitalization experience was that much better because of the care they received from you. This confirmed my reasoning for choosing to become a nurse because of the ability to make a positive impact in others. I love being a nurse. I love being able to care for people. It excites me, makes me happy, and fulfills me

I am grateful for all my clinical experiences I have undergone and the support from faculty/hospital staff because it has helped mold me into the nurse I am today. I could have not accomplished so much without their help and guidance. Now time to spread our wings and fly to reach the stars!!!! Congrats everyone…WE MADE IT

NRS 420 Final Entry

/in /by

Does anyone else ever find themselves thinking about how they would hypothetically medically treat someone?

 

Like, if you’re watching a movie, and someone gets hurt in the movie, and you start thinking about what you’d do to help them? Or even just a story on the news, or an experience your friend tells you about. My brain immediately starts to think about medical care that would be involved. It’s weird, but perhaps it’s a good sign.

The closest thing I can equate it to is when I took a film class in high school. We were to watch the movie Casablanca nearly frame by frame to understand the composition, camera work, setting, lighting, etc. . After finishing watching the film like that for a few days, my teacher said, “now, when you see things on TV or in the theater, try not to analyze it like you did here.” I think a similar thing is happening to me with nursing, in that I’m thinking about it constantly instead of just thinking about it when applicable.

Maybe I’m just really itching to start working. Either way, my experiences in this class and in the attached clinical have been phenomenal this semester, and I feel like they’ve really helped to get me motivated for what’s to come. Being in the critical care, DOU, emergency, and operating room settings have helped me to really apply what I’ve learned in class to my patients, and I can’t wait to start doing that as a real nurse.

 

Cheers!

-Carl

The Future…and Beyond.

/in /by

      The medical industry is in a period of rapid transition. The technological advances that have occurred in the last ten years is astounding. One can only imagine what is to come. The rapid advances in technology along with health care reform and the millions of aging “Baby Boomers” is a heavy cocktail for not only the amount of change forthcoming in nursing. As the “Baby Boomer” generation ages and the patient population continues to rise, physicians are unable to meet the demands. Therefore, healthcare is relying heavily on nurses and the scope of practice for nursing is increasing. This emphasizes the reasons that the healthcare industry is pushing to produce better educated, and well rounded nurses that will have the ability to take on more responsibility in their care. This will be crucial with the shortage of primary care physicians as nurses will need to step in. The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis estimates that by 2020, the U.S. will experience a shortfall of 20,400 primary care physicians. Furthermore, only 12% of American medical students focus on primary care, while 85% of nurse practitioner students prepare to offer primary care of family medicine. Lawmakers are discussing the expansion of the role of nurse practitioners to make them more autonomous and care for the inundating patient population. However, in order to fill the primary gap, nurses need more education. As the healthcare industry will increasingly rely on advanced practice nurses with MSN degrees to provide primary care for patients, hospitals are also increasing their standards and requiring nurses to have a BSN.

      This only solidifies my desire to continue my education in nursing and achieve my MSN. Through my nursing school career, I have learned the importance and the value of knowledge, research, and evidenced based practice to improve and advance the nursing profession as a whole. I hope that I can some day contribute to our expanding profession as we work to deliver exceptional patient care. As of now, I have not decided what direction to take or where my true passion lies in nursing. However, I do know that whatever I do, I want to make an impact on the lives of my patients and an impact on the nursing profession.  

http://blog.pharmadiversityjobboard.com/prepare-for-the-future-of-nursing-earn-an-msn-today/

Graduation, here we come!

/in /by

4673644403_1670415837_z

Getting out of clinical this past Sunday, I knew that it was the last day of clinical ever, but for some reason it didn’t really hit me as the end of nursing school. I went to class on Monday and still, it just felt like another regular week of school. It wasn’t until Tuesday night, when I sat with my group to finish up our presentation that it really hit me, this will be the last assignment, no more late nights, no more coffee runs before school, and no more class time. As I sat there, I couldn’t help but remember the first semester during pathophysiology. The room filled with unfamiliar faces, strange personalities, and now, three years later there is nothing weird about sitting with my group members, expressing our opinions about which direction we want our project to go. The change is unreal. We have come so far, overcome boundaries, shared tears, worked on countless projects, called each other during joyous and stressful occasions, and to think this will all be over soon is so bittersweet.

 

This class has been such a learning experience. It was more than just focusing on all the critical care content, using technology and blogging came as a pleasant surprise. I never knew how much I would enjoy blogging; it sure does make blackboard discussion board look bad. Thanks Jaime! I think this was a great way to end our nursing education, venturing into the vast world of technology, which can be scary and so beneficial at the same time.

 

Coming in three years ago I knew it would be challenging for me, as I am not the most outgoing or loudest person in the room, but I thank the instructors and above all, my classmates for making me feel at ease with them. Now, there is nothing I am afraid of, we came together for this experience, shared failures and successes, laughter, and that is something I will always cherish. Cheers to the memories that have past and to the memories that are to come! I love you all!

Last blog

/in /by

I am excited to see the light at the end of the tunnel! It has been three years of hard work and dedication. I can’t wait to be a nurse and start working. Nursing is such a rewarding career because you can feel good about yourself when you care for someone and make their day a good one.

In respect to this course, I enjoyed it a lot because it allowed me to think more critically. Also, I was able to see many of the medical conditions presented in the book in the actual clinical setting. This enabled me to remember the disease process better by having witnessed the disease. Also, I enjoyed the presentations of several of our guest’s speakers; they were all informative and gave real scenarios which allowed me to  learn the concepts better. For instance, the speaker on mechanical ventilation was great and I applied what he said on my clinical days. I was able to observe my patients who were on a mechanical ventilator and with a respiratory therapist I was able to review the settings of several of my patients. Moreover, this course was fun because it was structured a little different. We were able to blog homework assignments. I definitely recommend this course structure for future cohorts. Lastly, I enjoyed working on the voice thread project with my group. First time I used this format to present and I really enjoyed it and find it fun to learn this way!