This week i was in day stay and it was pretty cool.The best thing that happened was when i got to see a wound vac!! I got to see the inside of a hollow hole that kind of looked like a bullet wound....The worst thing must of been just sitting around for like 20 mins when waiting for the wound nurse. This week was good.
Technology that i observed was one of those sympatic temperature that they swipe your forehead with! I've heard about it but never actually seen one. Another thing was IV pole to get 3 units of blood once a week because he has some sort of cancer.
I did not see a real diagnostic procedure due to the fact that I was with patients who were jut getting out of surgery.
The therapeutic procedures I saw was a patient icing his foot after surgery. The next thing I saw was a wound vac. She removed the bandages and cut a new piece of foam to stick into the hole.
I didn't encounter much medical terminology but i did hear Narco which is a really strong hydrocodone that you can only get a 30 day prescription of. Some doctors are trying to switch to tylenol #3 because it requires less recording but it has been known to cause horrible stomach aches and is not as effective at painkilling.
The environment was very calming and relaxed which was really nice and I suppose it would've been really nice for the patients who were recovering. The nurses all seem to be really good friends and they had fun conversations about dates and such! They also had a nick name for patients who come very often, "frequent fliers", which is really funny. Also, they all seemed really concerned about a patient who they see frequently who didn't come in that day.
There were lots of different people coming through the nurses station including anesthesia doctors and nurses and surgical techs and surgeons. They had a board for everyone's different jobs and if someone couldn't do something everyone would offer to help! it was great how they all were eager to help each other. Everyone was great at communication except for one nurse who spoke very broken English. All their stuff was very clean and packaged separately.
The new information was watching the wound vac and seeing how they did it. I also learned about different drugs and procedures.
After surgery there are diagnostic test that are ran to check patient status. They generally will draw labs. They may take blood sugar. post surgery b/c of issue injury BS tend to be high, insulin maybe need. So diagnostic test can be something as simple as a finger stick, or drawing blood to make sure a patient is not bleeding post surgery.
ReplyDelete"frequent flier" is a term commonly used throughout the hospital. Pretty universal in all the units.
Elaborate on the wound vac, what did you learn about it? Why was the would vac used? What drugs and what procedures?