At clinicals, the nurse I was following gave me an electronic fetal monitor strip and told me I'd be responsible for charting for this patient.
Now, you may think; eh, that doesn't sound so bad. But it was. It is. EFM is laborious, tedious, and mind numbing. Plus, I'm not going to be a labor and delivery nurse so why on the planet was I assigned to this task?!
An example: (from google, not from my clinical site, in case you were wondering)
Looks like a lot of squiggly lines, right? Well, for one, I can tell you that this baby is in fetal distress due to the variable decelerations, and the momma is having pretty frequent contractions. Thankfully, I also see some accelerations, but we've got to get this baby out, and soon.
My butt was kicked this week. It was truly a horrible week to be alive, and each day brought on a new, dreaded problem. Family issues on top of school issues, on top of psychotic roommate issues makes for one exhausted nursing student.
I had to take Monday off to be a witness in court, and that was a cluster you-know-what. Emotionally drained from that, I returned on Tuesday, took an exam in the afternoon (yuck), and tried to keep my chin up while simultaneously blinking back tears all dang day. Wednesday was EFM hell, a fetal demise (horrible), and I was scolded by my nurse because I was observing too much, and not helping enough. I'm sorry; I thought that holding a laboring mother while an epidural was placed, then placing a Foley, removing a Foley, obtaining vitals and holding mom's legs back while she was in active labor was participating.
Thursday was exhausting with finishing up clinicals and just when I thought I could power through the rest of the day, I attended my weekly Bible study only to realize it was a huge mistake and literally ran out the door to avoid exploding. <--- That didn't go over well.
I have assignments to complete today and my final pediatric clinical tomorrow.
I'm exhausted.
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