Rapid loss of age

I believe this hospital has the fountain of youth posing as a beautiful decoration in the Lobby.

In our little class conference to receive my assignment, I was told I was going to be in the caregiver roll this time around (more on the different rolls next week). My RN instructor said I would have a 77 year old male patient. By the time I made it to my said room to do my first assessment and take vital signs I found my patient in bed wearing Dora the Explorer socks....Oh and he was 19 years old. All I could say is "wow, you lost 60 something years overnight!" Clearly my nurse was working off an old census when she gave the assignments; my new patient was just admitted about 3 hours prior to our arrival.

Over all, that first day was pretty uneventful. He was a sweet patient, who sadly has seen more hospital time then I ever have. There wasn't much I could do for him or that he wanted me to do for that matter; he was still ambulatory, didn't have bandages, and all his medication was passed via I.V. (a no-no for Intro students to change). My direct patient care consisted of my assessment, vitals x 2, bringing blankets, and just popping my smiling face in the door every 2 hours...just in case he forgot who I was. :) Indirectly there was documentation (charting) and filling out my school assignment forms which consisted of a Head-to-Toe assessment and creating a nursing diagnoses x2 and matching care plans (interventions/teaching) to go with the diagnoses.

Coming up with nursing diagnoses and care plan was a bit difficult for me with this particular patient. Outwardly he appeared great, no obvious signs of illness. Leaving me to turn to the chart to try and make head from tails of the labs results from blood draws taken upon his admission. Very challenging when you really don't know what the heck you are looking at, but overall a GREAT learning experience. By the time is was all said and done I must have done something correctly, I received a perfect score on the graded portion of the nursing care plan.

I look forward to see what role I will be in next week. Alright, time to start studying for a test in theory that we are taking tomorrow!