My Nursing Skills Put to Use...well at least the supplies

I just started my Junior year of "THE Nursing Program" at Idaho State University. The past few weeks have been full of ups and downs. Pretty much a roller coaster of experience and information being dumped down on me. It feels pretty overwhelming at times despite our instructor's assurance that we'll make it...or the hour they required us to go to a Yoga class to destress. The second day of class they gave us our first goody bag which contained: vials of saline, practice insulin, heparin, etc, but the best part is all the syringes ha ha ha... Then the next week we got our IV starting stuff which had more saline and dressings.

The table of stuff we were given...I'm sure glad they increased our "professional" fee ;)

Why is this all important? Hold on Blog creepers this is where it all gets interesting....I have all this equipemnt lurking in my apartment. Pretty much it was begging me to use it, but the hold up is we aren't allowed to start IV's or give any injections without our instructor.

That said...I was sitting in Institute class when Ellen (the reason for this blog) comes in a little late and sits next to me. She leans over and says, "Wanna see something gross?" Immediately my eyes got huge!! She showed me the nastiness which was her leg. She's on the ISU soccer team and during the game this last weekend in Moscow got a nasty friction burn from her shin guards. Not only was it all red and junk, but this thing was weepy, oozy, and just flat our sick. All through class she had the weepy yellow protein junk running down her leg. This is when I get the brilliant idea of using my "goody bags". Needless to say I'll I could think about through Institute is the steps of wound care and as to which dressing out of the 4,000 would be the best fit for her situation; could have been that we just had a lecture about wounds and such. Then at the end of class some other chica who was sitting in front of us offers her two cents about wound care...ah the untrained hmmm...poor advice kinda like the advice Norma Jones in the neighborhood was given to put butter on her venous ulcer (school required "soap opera").

I think I look a little too excited about it all....

Ellen comes to my apartment and I set up all my supplies, a 5/8 inch 25 gauge 3 mL syringe with Normal Saline. (the only thing you should clean any wound with... that's right put down that bottle of hydrogen peroxide right now!!!)



I postition her leg in an emesis basin and proceed to clean the wound from any left over gunk (pant lint, dirt, etc). I blasted all the stuff so well with the syringe! Poor Ellen the whole time was cringing from pain only to have me grab sterile gauze and wet it with normal saline to scrub the remainder. It's all clean now and I place neosporin on it. (I had better stuff but it's prescription-they're kinda illegal to share!) I grab what I've selected to cover the wound with...tegaderm. Okay so it's all I really had, but for the wound it also was the most fitting. Convenient!!





Overall, I think I learned a great deal from the experience!! I got so giddy about it all!! I LOVE NURSING!!What I love even more is using what I've learned!! Thank you Ellen for the nasty strawberry and the wonderful experienc!!