Bedbaths, Sterile Dressings, and Accuchecks...Oh My!

I'll spare you all the gross details. But nursing school is not a glamorous life, by any means. On Mondays and Fridays, I roll out of bed at a lovely hour of 4:40am....head to the bus stop by 5:30am, ride to Georgetown University to catch the shuttle to the Washington Hospital Center to be there by 7:00am, where my clinical instructor, Dina, waits to tell us what exciting things we have planned for the day.

Exciting things including: Patients with C. difficile- and they need a bed bath. If you're really interested, Google it (like I said, I'll spare the gross details). Then, after reading, imagine about 10x worse than what is explained on the Mayo Clinic website. When we treat patients with C-diff (oh you know...just teaching you some medical lingo)- we are on contact precautions and enteric precautions: meaning you gown up- full blown mask, gown, booties, gloves...the works. Then you get to bathe the patient (who is incontinent) while they remain in bed.

Or exciting things may mean we practice sterile dressing.
This is my butt:

















Ok. Obviously, not MY butt...but we really use this butt (yes, this model) to practice sterile dressing changes. In the event that patients have surgical wounds or decubiti (fancy word for "bed sores" or "pressure ulcers")...we use sterile dressings to keep the skin intact.

And then we have accu-checks. The daily ritual of taking blood glucose levels, usually from diabetics who despise you for pricking their fingers so often. The first time I went into the room (2 weeks ago), my patient was a schizophrenic with seizure warnings. She was confused and asking for "Robert" (apparently there is no Robert). Well, I guess she didn't like me very much because she got violent with me, which is when Dina said to me, "Becca, today is not the day that I will teach how to fight with a patient."

So, after doing all this, I get to return to school until 5pm, feeling the germs basically crawling on my body. It's enough to give you the hibby-jibbies and I am thrilled to hop in the shower at the end of the day.