The second week of my preceptorship brought many new experiences for me, and I can honestly say that each day I spend with my preceptor is better than the last. This week I focused on time management of a full patient load with continued documentation practice as well as admission and discharge procedures. I’ve had brief experiences in my past rotations assisting with discharge teaching and admission assessments however I have never been able to fully take charge and complete the process from start to finish, so this was a great learning opportunity for me. My first day with my preceptor this week (Wednesday October 26, 2011) was cut short due to a school obligation and personal situation. Although I only spent five hours on my unit, I …show more content…

Instead, Kathryn wanted to observe me. I felt very excited that she trusted me with an important task, and although she was sitting next to me walking me through the entire process, it was still an amazing learning opportunity for me. I was able to manage the needs of my other two patients (a 22-day-old baby, and a 56-year-old pneumonia patient) and successfully complete the entire discharge process that included entering orders, reconciling the medications, administering a final dose of pain medication, and providing instructions and teaching to both mom and the patient before calling the departure. For the future I need to be a little more organized and have everything pulled together before going in to the room, for example this patient needed a note for her school, and mom had also requested a flu shot for her daughter before leaving. Kathryn told me I did well, but next time I will make it a goal to not have to run back and forth out of the room to obtain additional things. Almost as soon as we discharged our patient, we were notified by the charge nurse that we would be getting a new patient, a 41-year-old woman with a DVT and a heparin drip. When the patient arrived I was able to complete the entire health history and admission assessment. It was my first time having to interview the patient about every