No Part 2

Some people believe that aliens came from outer space and planted the seed of life here on earth. I scoff at such ridiculous notions. Life was already here; they planted care plans.

That is the only explanation I can think of for care plans. Or maybe it was a group of professors sitting around laughing and thinking about what they could do to discourage and weed out students:
"Hey, I know! We'll assign them more paperwork! Oh, oh, and just to make it fun, they'll have to copy out most of the patient's medical chart! Ha ha! And then, then, they'll have to look up all the thirty zillion medications we have them on and list the entire drug guide listing for each one!"
"*giggle* That is such a wonderful idea! And we won't have them start doing this until right before they're due, so they don't know what they're doing!"
"Ho ho, but you guys are missing the best part of all: we'll have them start doing it right around the time they go out into the hospitals and see that these care plans, that they've spent hours mounting up to years of their lives making, are completely useless in the real world!" [here the whole conference of teachers collapses into paroxysms of uncontrollable mirth]

I like most of my teachers, and don't want to think ill of them. That's why I prefer the alien theory.

I can see the point of careplans a little bit, especially in the beginning. In a care plan you look at the problems the patient is having that the nurse (and NOT the doctor) can do something about. Then you set a measurable goal for your client, list the things you would do to achieve that goal, and evaluate how well things worked. You have to have several of these client problems (from Fluid Imbalance to Risk for Injury to Ineffective Coping), even more goals for both short and long term, and enough nursing interventions to make your fingers cramp when you try to type them up. *sigh* Not bad for the beginning. But to have them count for such a huge part of our clinical grades, when we will not ever use them in practice, seems a bit much. I shouldn't complain; I should just be thankful we only have three this semester instead of one every week!


In case you were wondering, there is no second part for the first part I put about my summer on the ship. Though the rest of what I did in the summer was ok, it was mainly work. Oh, and a family reunion where we had 30 people at the house for a weekend. That was so much fun! The air conditioning stopped working so it was really hot in the kitchen, but otherwise it was great.

I have been wondering what the future of this blog really is.

Thank you to the people who do actually read it. Maybe someone will read it. Maybe if I posted more often...


Time for sleepin'. (yes, actually, I am a college student that goes to bed early. Sometimes I'm asleep before my grandparents!)