drop and give me twenty old man - i didn't say that i swear!

So today was my first day in clinicals. Because this summer is just a little "get your feet wet" clinical, we only go for about four hours for the next two weeks. We do, however, have to do a fair amount of work on our own (research on all the medications our patients are on, and all their medical diagnoses). So today we were at the nursing home which was kind of depressing- lots of elderly people half asleep in wheelchairs in one big room. It took us about three hours to wake the patients, clothe (and possibly change them) and transfer them from the bed to a wheelchair. (Each room has a built in rail on the ceiling that they hook up to a mechanical lift that lifts the patient in a sling out of bed and into a wheelchair) Then (two hours later) came breakfast. It took about an hour to feed the residents. My little lady didn't speak at all, but was a good eater. Andrew was the lucky one who got the screamer (and she was loud!).

Part of our clinical experience is also developing a nursing care plan for one of the patients at our clinical sites. To make things a little easier, we were assigned a resident at the nursing home (because the patients at the hospitals are more likely to get discharged before we get all our information). The last hour we spent at the nursing home was looking through our assigned patient's chart. Our clinical instructor said she picked patients that didn't have really advanced dementia so that we could get a good history, and get comfortable talking and interacting with patients. I was a little worried when i flipped open my chart and saw the permission form for antipsychotic meds and the severe dementia rating report. Upon closer inspection, she seems to have adjusted to life at the "villas" quite well. (a stark contrast to the information about her admission nine months ago)

All nine of the students in my clinical were sitting in the living room area going through charts and trying to translate Doctor's scribble and random abbreviations. In the middle of this, there is a patient sitting near the tv who, about every ten minutes or so, drops down and gives us twenty. yeah, push ups- it was really cute, and certainly quite random. So after getting the information i needed to do research tomorrow, i thought it would be good to go introduce myself to my patient. I walk over to her room and sort of hover by the door because it's open just a crack. Another nurse or tech walks by and asks if i want to go in. I nod and smile meekly, and she just pushes open the door and tells me to go on in. The first thing I see is that cute old man doing push ups on my patient's room floor. But the really odd thing, is that my poor little patient is on the toilet with the door open. It was really awkward, but she just smiled like there was nothing odd about meeting a new student while she's on the john with a guy doing push ups on her floor.