First Experiences

During this internship, I won’t really be working on any projects.  The focus of my internship is to get nursing experience and to understand the basic flow of the nursing field. Another focus of my internship will be to see the way a rural hospital functions versus the flow of a larger hospital. My first experiences have been very positive. I have met a lot of really great people and the atmosphere at a rural hospital is a lot less stressful than a larger hospital. Everyone knows each other, including employees and patients. This cohesion is a wonderful asset for a hospital.  The experience I gain will greatly depend on where I am and the census of the area I am in. My first day was on a floor called medical-surgical or med-surg for short. Med-surg is a general floor and is going to be a collection of all conditions from urinary tract infections to surgical patients fresh from surgery. The goal is to treat the patient with the guidance of physician orders. The physician will determine which medications and possible treatments need to be provided to help a patient recover enough to be discharged from the hospital. On med-surg, I had the opportunity to see several conditions including a hypoglycemic patient. Hypoglycemia is when a patient’s blood sugar drops below a certain level. We had to administer an Intravenous solution called Dextrose 50, which is a honey thick substance basically with sugar in it. I look forward to many more days at Covenant.