The title of this post is in the format of a Nursing Diagnosis. A nursing diagnosis is sort of like a medical diagnosis in that it identifies a particular aspect of a patient to treat, however, it is has more to do with the individual, family, or community experience/response to the medical diagnosis or life processes than the medical diagnosis itself. It is basically distinguishing things that nurses can do to affect a patient's treatment experience. I am going to take you through my nursing diagnosis step-by-step, partially because it is an educational experience for me and partially because it is a de-stressing activity.
Nursing school has so many side effects on nursing students. There are obvious ones like increased critical thinking and communication skills, decreased gag-reflex, and impaired writing skills. One major one for me is increased anxiety levels. Up until now, I have dealt with the anxiety-inducing events with ease, following the thought process that the event is going to happen anyway so I might as well prepare as best as I can for it while I can instead of stressing about it. Now, with a completed medication administration performance evaluation under my belt (as of this afternoon) and a major exam coming up tomorrow, my mindset is a bit less accepting. This afternoon, immediately before my performance evaluation, I felt the first symptoms of my anxiety. They diminished slightly after running at the gym, but resumed at a greater intensity after I returned to campus and studied with peers. My anxiety, as it is due to more than one factor of nursing school, is secondary to nursing school.
Although my heightened anxiety is of reasonable concern, it is not my major concern at the moment - my lack of sleep is. A "disturbed sleep pattern" is a nurse's way of saying I am not getting enough sleep for some reason. Despite having the right environment to sleep (a quiet, warm, dark room), an adequate amount of time to sleep, and providing myself with an almost excessive level of comfort (body pillow, three blankets, and a stuffed cat to cuddle - DO NOT JUDGE ME) I am consistently unable to fall asleep. Whenever I try to sleep, my brain will not "power down" and I continue thinking about the same things that are causing me stress, further amplifying my anxiety.
As I write, I realize that the explanation of my anxiety is not complete; I have not spoken to what anxiety is and how I experience anxiety (such as the physical response). I will not go into detail in this post about it as I do want to try to get some rest in preparation for my exam tomorrow, but I will emphasize that everyone experiences and expresses anxiety differently and that some forms of anxiety relief are not as effective for some as others.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my brief explanation of nursing diagnoses! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anxiety. Show all posts
22 October 2013
18 October 2013
It's Been a Rough Week.
This week has challenged me more mentally and physically than any other week of nursing school. Returning from my relaxing week back home, I literally hit the ground running - I was going to miss the streetcar and have to wait another twenty-something minutes for the next one. I had several meetings scheduled and events to arrange as well as homework and working out. Yet with all that I am doing, I could not outrun the cold that is going around campus. I am currently fighting, tooth-and-nail to get over it, but for some reason, I cannot shake it! I need not tell you how FRUSTRATING IT IS.
With all that is going on, I am more frustrated with the sources of my friends' worries. One of the biggest concerns has been clinical sites that lack concern for residents to the extent that the residents are not receiving adequate care. Another concern has been our research course, which does not seem to satisfactorily prepare nursing students for the papers assigned. The last major concern has been keeping track of all the assignments due for each class. Although it does not seem like a significant concern, the Linfield nursing curriculum is linked with four classes a semester that must be taken concurrently and sometimes course assignments seem to run into each other because they are similar in topic.
It is unfortunate that some clinical sites do not provide adequate care for its residents, however, as nursing students we should take that upon ourselves to make a good example. This is what we are taught to do - to develop our critical thinking skills and make the healthcare community better as best as we can! It seems daunting for a first semester nursing student, but we are also adults with two years of education behind us.
As far as our research course goes, I applaud students' efforts to go above and beyond realistic expectations of educational standards of nurses. Not many nursing students will go into research, but they still feel the need to learn the material. The students are struggling to write a literature review. Not only have we had very little experience with APA formatting, we do not understand the structure of a literature review. It is one thing to have very little instruction but plenty of resources and it is another thing to have very little instructions and very little resources. Fortunately, students have bonded together and commiserated over the lack of collective knowledge.
The last concern my friends' had was over the seemingly haphazard scheduling of assignments. One piece of advice given to us at orientation was to write all the assignments and projects out in our planners so we would always have a complete reference. The unfortunate part of this, is that professors often rearrange schedules and accommodate to the learning styles of each class. This can form a jumble of problems for those nursing students who like to have clearly defined schedules.
I apologize for my rant, I just want people to realize that nursing students are humans too. My friends and I are all compassionate people that want to be the best nurses, and people, we can be. Nursing school is challenging me in ways I had not even imagined - and it is only the first semester! If all weeks are like this, I may need more support, but I refuse to give in and fall into the monotonous stereotype of a nurse. I am not going to college, putting in this much work, and drinking this much caffeine to end up like that.
With all that is going on, I am more frustrated with the sources of my friends' worries. One of the biggest concerns has been clinical sites that lack concern for residents to the extent that the residents are not receiving adequate care. Another concern has been our research course, which does not seem to satisfactorily prepare nursing students for the papers assigned. The last major concern has been keeping track of all the assignments due for each class. Although it does not seem like a significant concern, the Linfield nursing curriculum is linked with four classes a semester that must be taken concurrently and sometimes course assignments seem to run into each other because they are similar in topic.
It is unfortunate that some clinical sites do not provide adequate care for its residents, however, as nursing students we should take that upon ourselves to make a good example. This is what we are taught to do - to develop our critical thinking skills and make the healthcare community better as best as we can! It seems daunting for a first semester nursing student, but we are also adults with two years of education behind us.
As far as our research course goes, I applaud students' efforts to go above and beyond realistic expectations of educational standards of nurses. Not many nursing students will go into research, but they still feel the need to learn the material. The students are struggling to write a literature review. Not only have we had very little experience with APA formatting, we do not understand the structure of a literature review. It is one thing to have very little instruction but plenty of resources and it is another thing to have very little instructions and very little resources. Fortunately, students have bonded together and commiserated over the lack of collective knowledge.
The last concern my friends' had was over the seemingly haphazard scheduling of assignments. One piece of advice given to us at orientation was to write all the assignments and projects out in our planners so we would always have a complete reference. The unfortunate part of this, is that professors often rearrange schedules and accommodate to the learning styles of each class. This can form a jumble of problems for those nursing students who like to have clearly defined schedules.
I apologize for my rant, I just want people to realize that nursing students are humans too. My friends and I are all compassionate people that want to be the best nurses, and people, we can be. Nursing school is challenging me in ways I had not even imagined - and it is only the first semester! If all weeks are like this, I may need more support, but I refuse to give in and fall into the monotonous stereotype of a nurse. I am not going to college, putting in this much work, and drinking this much caffeine to end up like that.
09 October 2013
Nursing Diagnosis
Earlier this morning my friend and I were discussing other majors we would be if we could be more than one major. The self-imposed limit was four, so I chose five:
- Athletic training
- Anthropology
- Psychology
- Creative Writing
- Microbiology
Sitting in the fading light of the afternoon helped me contemplate why I was not a double major. There were the obvious reasons (financial, temporal, etc.), but I kept returning to a thought I have had more and more frequently - there is too much to know. With whatever subject topic, there is literally too much to know.
For instance, before I reflected on the previously mentioned conversation I was becoming increasingly overwhelmed with the amount of work I had to accomplish before the weekend. Added to the stress, I also felt the pressure of having to complete a major health requirement for clinical when I did not have the adequate level of health literacy to do so. (I'll talk about health literacy tomorrow. Point being, my anxiety level was high.) I could not imagine completing and being able to properly understand it all. There was too much to learn!
My dilemma reminded me of a book I read over the summer called Too Big To Know which discussed the difficult topic of knowledge. It was a bit of a tough read conceptually, but it flowed well. I definitely recommend it for intellectual stimulation. Anyway, it talked about how knowledge has more depth now than ever before because of the increasing amount of knowledge available world-wide. It is actually rather mind-blowing. The book made it a point to reassure its readers that no matter how many books, articles, webpages, so on and so forth one reads, one will never be a know-it-all. As weird as it sounds, thinking about the book and all that it had to say calmed me and helped me focus on the tasks at hand.
Oh the strange things I think about...
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