Clinical lab

In clinicals today the focus was on changing beds and general hygiene issues. I'm finding a lot in nursing and the educational philosophy that I really respect in a way that I didn't expect to. We could have learned to make hospital corners (though there wasn't nearly the emphasis on that that I'd thought there would be) and give bed baths and shave and feed people grumbling about the servitude of it all or the gross tasks that nurses are assigned. But we didn't. Our lab instructor challenged us to really embrace these tasks and learn to do them well, since we only have five quarters to master these. She pointed out that the nurses should make the eating experience pleasant for the patients. Rather than shoving food down their throats, we should make sure the environment's comfortable and should chat with the patient and help them be as independent as possible while they ate. And the reason for the touchy-feely stuff isn't to take a break or to make them happy, but because it's conducive to healthful digestion and so on. Likewise with the bathing, it's not just a way to make the patient clean, but an opportunity to check the integrity of their skin and we should do things a certain way not just because it's efficient, but because it will improve the experience of the patient, protect their health, make them more comfortable, and so on.

So I bathed M and M and C bathed me. I changed a bed. Brushed C's teeth with a toothbrush and a toothette (a sponge on a stick, basically). It was nice that the toothbrushing happened after lunch, since I'd had the veggie gumbo soup. C did a nice job of cleaning my teeth. We have an assignment to shave and feed someone and a few of the classmates were taking care of this at lab. They were applying shaving cream to other girl's faces and using a razor (with cap still on) to scrape it off. I'm going to try to find someone with an electric razor to practice my shaving skills.

I think we're on to something with this personal hygeine stuff. We could all save some time and get a little extra practice if we just forgo hygeine at home and come to the lab each morning for bed baths and toothettes!