February 1st, 2012: Today I was working in the female ward once again. The nursing students were there today so I spent the day mostly with them. The first thing that they did was clean (dust and wash everything down). They say it is because it is a nursing duty to ensure that the environment is not dusty to protect the patients. The next thing they did was work with me on some head-to-toe assessments. It took a long time. It is not until I have come here that I have realized how much I truly know. It is really hard to start from the very beginning I am finding. I tried to teach them how to chart and they seemed to be liking that. While doing head to toe assessments we noticed a patient that was bleeding from many different areas, who was doing great yesterday after recieving blood the day before. So my colleague and I collected all the information we could on the patient and called the doctor (that was the first time I have ever called a doctor!) and he came in a few hours to assess the patient. His final diagnosis was Disseminated Inter Coagulation, which means the patient had such a big infection that the body used up all the clotting abilities it had and it is now just bleeding freely. We were so thankful the doctor came in and proud that we advocated for our patient like we did.

Another patient that I saw was a patient with a colostomy and a urostomy (hole made in the bladder for urine to come out of). They were using a garbage bag for the colostomy and nothing for the urostomy. So working with the students we practised using a proper colostomy bag and how to care for both the holes. The next patient that I saw was a patient with a very large pelvic absess that had burst. It is the craziest wound I have ever seen. The student stops, looks at it, looks at me, then says "so, I guess i'll just watch you do it tomorrow then?" I just laughed and thought holy crap. So tonight with my fellow students we are going to brainstorm how the heck we are going to help this patient out.

It was very interesting, because one of the doctors did not do rounds yesterday. So very different from home. I was lucky to have my cell phone on me to call the doctor because the power was out, so they can't use the phones on the unit. Nor do they like to phone the doctors, which reminded me of home, haha. So in all, today was very interesting. It is also interesting to see the difference in nursing programs. Here, they are very task orientated. If you ask them why they are doing something, they have to think really hard about that and sometimes aren't sure. So we are trying to teach them as much as possible about why they do what they do. I am learning alot from the nurses and nursing students here and they are learning from my collegeauges and I as well. I am doing things here that nurses would faint if they found out students were doing. I actually feel like a real nurse! People listen to you and value your opinion, it is really nice. Until next time! :)