Hey Everyone,
I hope every one’s week is going good. Once again, I keep forgetting it is Monday because I done clinicals all weekend again and it feels like it is Friday or Saturday. I have pulled a total of 72 hours (6 clinicals day doing 12 hour shifts) and remember I have to get 240…so I’m getting there lol. Clinicals are going great and I am learning A LOT. I have some interesting stuff to tell ya about one of my eventful clinical days.
On Friday my professor came to visit me at my clinical site because it was time for my 60 hour meeting so we could discuss how everything was going. This meeting included my professor, me, and preceptor and it was suppose to last around 30 minutes. While we were having our meeting we had another RN watch and monitor our patients until we were done. Well during about 10 minutes into the meeting one of the nurses runs into the conference room and tells my preceptor “We need you NOW!”.
Code Blue Experience as a Nursing Student/Preceptee
So my preceptor and I run out to see what is going on and we find that one of our pts (remember the story about the nitroglycerin in my second to last post) was coding. The pt was going into V-tach. This is where the heart is pumping so fast that it is fixing to give out and the next step is v-fib or asystole (flat line) ( v-tach is an emergency) so you want to get the pt out of v-tach. When we arrived the pt was like a grayish color and the pt eyes were starting to roll back into the pt’s head. During all this time I’m literally just frozen thanking God that I’m not the one in charge and hoping that the pt lives.
Thankfully after about 30 seconds the pt rhythm goes back to normal sinus rhythm. You may ask how did the pt’s heart automatically go back to NSR without us shocking him or doing anything? The pt’s pacemaker had an internal defibrillator that shocked him immediately once the pt went into v-tach and then from there it was a quick recovery. Later on after everything calmed down I asked my preceptor why the pt’s eyes where rolling back and my preceptor said that the pt was fixing to have a seizure any minute. So thank God for internal defibrillators!!
This event will be engraved in my brain for the rest of my life. I have never ever experienced a life or death situation before as a student nurse but I’m glad I did. Real life is much more different from the classroom, and you will never find a nursing care plan example that will get your heart rate up like mine was.
It gave me taste of what I will be dealing with when I’m out there practicing on my own…and I’m the one in charge of the pt. Sheew….I just hope when I’m faced with this life or death situation I have enough experience to handle it properly. I don’t think I’m quite ready to be out there on my own yet. I still have so much more to learn. I am just glad it was a happy ending to my eventful clinical day. By the way, this was my preceptors first code since she has been working at this hospital (she has been there for year).
I hope everyone has a great week! As for me I’m resting the rest of the night, Tuesday (finishing up my paper…yes I’m still doing that silly Population Based paper…study for HESI), Wednesday I have class 8-4pm, Thursday (going to a quality meeting that I’m required to go to 1-3pm at the hospital), Friday being lazy…yeah right, Saturday…it’s Valentine Days hehe.
Until next time,
Sarah 😉