Thursday, August 02, 2007

Continuing education

Jeez! Where has newFNP been?

NewFNP's student finished her month at the clinic and claimed to learn a lot from newFNP. Ah, shaping young minds - what an inspiration. It helps when the student is brand new and literally everything is a learning experience.

All in all, newFNP was glad that her student got to see just how community health practice is.

For instance, one day newFNP asked her student to leave a half hour early so she would be spared the experience of observing newFNP rail on the manager for overbooking appointments at the end of the day. Certainly not community health's finest hour, but an integral part of newFNP's clinical experience.

Another day, newFNP was giving a little nutrition education to the parent of an obese three year old which included advising her to avoid giving her kid candy, to which this parent responded, "Oh, I don't give him candy - just lollipops." Bingo. When newFNP explained that lollipops are, in fact, a form of candy, the mother was astounded. "They are?," she asked, wide-eyed and as sincere as could be. You just can't pay for that kind of education. Truly, how many people with whom newFNP's student is in contact fail to grasp that a lollipop is candy? Are there some marketing geniuses at the super mercado who are selling lollipops in the produce section, convincing slow parents that a cherry-flavored lollipop is one in the quest for five fruits/veggies per day?

NewFNP had her patient doing paps, cleaning out cerumen, listening to hearts and lungs - whatever she could get her to do. NewFNP really loved doing the teaching, but realized that she was completely disorganized in the process. As newFNP's student has just finished her accelerated RN year and has yet to do her health assessment class, newFNP felt a little unsure as to how to help her along. At any rate, newFNP thinks that her student will be ahead of the pack when she starts her master's clinicals next year and that she herself will be better organized when the next student comes along.

And, for newFNP, it was really meaningful to help to support someone in their learning and in their development into an NP. So thanks to newFNP's alma mater and to her student for making an otherwise crappy July 2007 something meaningful.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I was wondering if you'd be interested in posting any articles from the Nursezone.com website. There are lots of relevant articles for todays nurse. The great news is that using nursezone content on your site is no cost. We'd just like to have a link back to our site for those of your bloggers interested in finding a community of nurses, CE opportunities, travel nursing and other relevant nurse aids. A partial example of a nursing article is below:

Nurse Overcomes Cancer—Twice—to Provide Care to Others

By Nancy Deutsch, RN, contributor

Many people yearn to make nursing their career, but few have to battle the odds like Valerie Bush.

The Independence, Kentucky, woman, who was a medical technician for six years and a nurse’s aide “on and off forever,” waited until her children were raised to return to nursing school. When she finally entered the Gateway Community and Technical College, it was unbelievably stressful. Not only was the single mother dealing with her course work, but her father died, and her youngest daughter was dealing with medical problems, including bipolar disease.

Bush, now 42 years old, was “disgustingly healthy when I started” school in 2004, but quite overweight, and she started to lose a lot of the extra girth.

“I lost massive amounts of weight in just a few months,” she recalled. “I was a pretty big girl. I lost 100 pounds.”

At first, Bush chalked up the weight loss and constant belching to stress, but when she shed all the weight, she found a lump in her breast. “I decided to see a doctor over break.”

Bush was diagnosed with DCIS, and beneath that, metastatic breast cancer.

“I lost everything in a week,” Bush said. The diagnosis sent her daughter off the deep end, upset her boyfriend, and meant she had to stop the classes she had waited so long to take.

“As a nurse, you think you know what a cancer diagnosis entails,” she said. “But you don’t. It affects every single thing in your life.” … (more article to come)

© 2007. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Let me know what you think.

Tracy (nursezoneportal@earthlink.net)

P.S. The onion is one of my favorite sites too.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for taking your valuable time to share your knowledge and experience with a student. I thank my lucky stars every night that there are supportive providers (such as my preceptors that were kind and patient enough to give me their time) that want to help students develop and continue the tradition of student-mentor training.

viagra online said...

I have been studying for a while to become a nurse and finally, I made it!
I'm very happy because my dream has become true! It's important to keep studying

nursing continuing education said...

one of the secrets of most successful nurses out there are education itself. There will be new technologies and new updates in their fields and with CE, they are able to gain the education they need to be competitive and successful in the changing field of nursing.