Acute care clinical

Holy cow! I can't believe it's already the end of November. This month seemed SO short, I guess because November only has 30 days and Thanksgiving in the middle breaks it up. I realized tonight that I had to pay my bills and register for the PEAT before the end of the month. I'm usually good about paying all my bills ahead of time, but every once in awhile it really sneaks up on me!

Even though November seemed short, it was pretty eventful. Here's what I did:

-Ran a marathon!!!
-Officially moved out of my apartment in Richmond (The day after the marathon. Not smart.)
-Completed the first 4 weeks of my clinical in acute care at UVA.
-Started the next 4 weeks of my clinical at the Transitional Care Center at UVA.
-Thanksgiving was thrown in there somewhere.
-Went to Lynchburg to visit Bud.

I wanted to share a little bit about my clinical since I've hardly mentioned it on my blog, because it's a big part of my life these days. In fact, I feel like all I do is wake up, go to clinical, come home, eat dinner, go to bed, and repeat the next day. When I'm dealing with clinical stuff all the time, it's usually the last thing I want to talk about on my blog, but now I'm finally ready to share what's been going on!

Acute: The first part of my clinical was acute care, which I thought I would LOVE. I did like it, but it was different from what I expected. I was on the cardiac floor, so a lot of the patients had sternal precautions. I got really good at teaching patients how to move without putting pressure on their sternal incision. However, the reason I like acute care is for the variety, and there wasn't much variety on the cardiac unit.
Also, I felt really inefficient in acute care. There was a lot of waiting around for patients. Or trying to find the nurse. Or trying to find the doctor to sign a transcript for a walker. Or trying to find the case manager to discuss discharge planning. I didn't mind doing it, but all of that was time that I didn't get to spend with patients.

TCH: Now I'm at the transitional care hospital, which I didn't think I would like. Surprisingly, I'm loving it there! The patients are really complicated and they've often had long hospital stays, which makes them somewhat fearful and anxious. But they are the cutest, most hilarious patients!
The days go by so fast. Since the patients are so involved, my instructor and I have to work together to give patients the assistance they need to get up. I feel like we're doing something all the time, not just walking next to a patient or waiting around for them. I love being able to get a patient walking who hasn't gotten out of bed in a month! It's an awesome feeling! A lot of the patients are on ventilators, so I've learned a little bit about respiratory care and vent weaning, too.

With these experiences, I'm seriously considering the fact that I may want to do inpatient rehab more than acute care. I knew I liked inpatient rehab, but always thought that acute care would be my first choice for a job. Now I'm starting to think that I like rehab a little better. I haven't fully decided- it's hard to know because transitional care isn't exactly like inpatient rehab. I just feel like I would be able to do a lot more skilled therapy, see a lot more progress, and get to know my patients a lot more in a rehab setting. Time will tell what I decide.