Your First Clinical Day + Giveaway!

Your First Clinical Day

P.S. Keep reading even if you're not a nursing student! I promise to make you laugh (embarrassing story anyone? Oh that's me!) and there's a giveaway open to ALL bloggers and there's also a surprise at the very bottom of the post. While you're down there, go visit A Happy Wife in New Orleans for some newlywed awesomeness!

It's the big day. You roll over at 4:45-5:00 in the morning and you turn off your alarm immediately, because you haven't slept the entire night in nervousness. You shower and get dressed in those brand new, washed, pressed scrubs. You grab your pocket protector loaded up with bandage scissors and your penlight along with some spare pens. You open up your stethoscope box for probably the hundredth time and then sling it around your neck.

You grab a quick breakfast, full of protein and head out the door, your stomach tied in knots.

When you arrive at the hospital, you park and then meet your classmates, where you all wait for your instructor.

It's your first clinical day.

Paige's First Clinical Day

I guess you could say my first clinical day was pretty eventful. I didn't sleep at all the night before. It was so bad. I laid awake all night. We had to be there by 6:45, so obviously I left my house at 5:45 to drive 20 minutes down the road.

When I got to the hospital, the day started out alright enough. We were being given a tour of the floor we would be on, which was an orthopedic floor.

Then we went into the supply closet. The supply closet was easily a good 20 degrees hotter than the floor. Let's rewind a minute, for breakfast that morning, I had only had some chocolate milk and a granola bar. Sound healthy? Yeah, apparently not. My blood sugar dropped way low as a result of running around. Plus, we think I had been locking my knees which caused blood flow to be reduced.

You know how in nursing school they teach you to slide down the wall or slide your patient down the wall in case they are feeling sick? Yeah, we had just learned that and we had to put it into practice. Thanks to me. I didn't faint. My vision blurred and then went black and I couldn't hear anything because of the loud buzzing in my ear. The only other time this had happened was in high school, when I had eaten cookies and had a grape soda for breakfast.

Within about 4 hours, it was all over our program that I had fainted in my first clinical. What makes this worse? My ex boyfriend is in my nursing program. I'm sure he had a field day with that. The worst part is that I didn't even get sick and almost faint because I saw something that was gross. The only time that's ever happened is when a patient had some really gross dentures. No, I got sick and almost fainted because I'm a dumbass that didn't eat a good breakfast.

Let this be a lesson to you, future and new nursing students, eat a good wholesome breakfast before your first clinical day.

Rae's First Clinical Day

My 1^st day of clinical is still a little bit of a blur. I was such a nervous wreck. I woke up feeling sick from nerves and my stomach hurt so badly! I had “packed” my bag the night before. Stethoscope. Check. Clipboard. Check. Extra name tag. Check. A WHOLE box of Band-Aids to cover my tattoos. Check. 50 gazillion pens in case I lost one. Check. Advil for my inevitable headache. Check. Every nursing book I own. Check. That little cute reference book that I’ll never use. Check. My super cute black and pink blood pressure cuff. Check. Seriously. 

I had to be there at 7am. It takes about 30 min to get there so it only makes sense to leave my house at like 10 till 6, just in case there was some crazy mad traffic that early. I set 3 different alarms in fear I would over sleep and I got to the facility at 6:20. Sooo I sat in the parking lot reviewing like my life depended on it. 

So first semester of clinical is always in a Nursing Home so that we can learn the basics of nursing care. So I go in thinking it’s gonna be like Grey’s Anatomy or something…wrong. I spent the whole day changing briefs, talking to my patients who stared at me all day, giving bed baths, ect. Funny story though. At this point we had not learned about the fancy lifts to move patients out of bed to chair and we were too afraid to ask anyone so a friend and I were moving our patients the old fashioned way… two person carry. Haha when we learned about the lifts we felt like idiots! 

All in all my first day was a success, barely. I didn’t get poop on me until the next week. When I got home that afternoon I went straight to bed and passed out till the next morning. Coming down off nerves is like coming down of drugs. I still get nervous but I like to think back to that day and sometimes I wish things were still that easy. 

So now that you've met your main contributors to this blog series (although there is another guest post coming up on Saturday!) it's time to show you what is being given away!

There will be 2 winners...one for each prize pack!

You've got this back to school pack sure to keep those blues at bay!

Includes:

2 nail polishes

pedicure kit

ELF shine eraser

ELF Lip Gloss

bath fizzers

Bodycology lotion and spray minis

Pack of pens

Cosmetic Bag

spiral notebad

sticky notepad

travel hairbrush

index tabs

calculator

Now, to fuel your study days, we got this lovely gift pack!

Includes:

Tumbler w/ top and straw

coffee mug

bag of coffee

lemonade packs

The winner will be announced Monday, August 27th so get your entries in!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

One more surprise:

This promotion ends after 7 people order OR Monday (whichever comes first!)

so get your orders in FAST! 

After that, production time on planners will also increase due to time restraints with school

Have you met this amazing blogger?