Mursing Blog

I think it’s interesting to see what sort of collections everyone else has, so here’s my collection of books.

Click Here!

Apologies for the phone camera picture, but I left my proper one at home.

Now it’s your turn!

Alone. Well, I have some room mates, but you know, they don’t count.

Taking a bit of time to get used to this whole thing, but I’m sure I’ll get it.

Internet is expensive down here, $10 for 1.2GB, or 1 week, whichever comes first, so looking at 40 a month at least.

Ugh, I wonder what alternatives I can get…

Medicine’s dream of growing new human hearts and other organs to repair or replace damaged ones received a significant boost on Sunday when University of Minnesota researchers reported success in creating a beating rat heart in a laboratory.

Another excellent milestone on the road to creating viable organs, coupling this with the ability to revert skin cells to stem cells and you just might have the biggest two medical advances that I can think of.

When you can dramatically extend life expectancy at high cost, and have the rich living three or four times longer than the poor, you also get some very interesting ethical and moral issues, not to mention social issues.

It happens already between countries (take the U.S.As 78.2 year life expectancy and compare it to Swazilands 39.6, for example), but if it starts happening within countries and along such strict castes (rich people get new organs, poor people don’t), I wonder what implications that might have.

Well, another study has just come back destroying the idea that thimerosal, which contains mercury, is causing Autism, which I’m sure is no surprise to the sane people out there, but I have no doubt it will be ignored by the rabid anti-vaccination crowd.

In short, it’s been seven years since thimerosal was removed from routine childhood vaccinations, and the rate of Autism hasn’t decreased, which would be the expected outcome if it was indeed the causative agent, it has in fact risen, a clear indicator that Thimerosal is, how do you say it, not the cause.

Some more evidence if you ever have to debate with a “Thimerosal == Autism!” person. Good luck.

JAMA and Archives Journals. “Autism: Removing Thimerosal From Vaccines Did Not Reduce Autism Cases In California, Report Finds.” ScienceDaily 8 January 2008. 10 January 2008 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/01/080107181551.htm>.

In the January offer round you have been offered:

And I haven’t been updating this. Why? No idea. No one reads, so no motivation, but then no new content so no one reads, it’s a bad thing.

And because nothing has been happening.

I’ve finished my course, that’s done, I’ll be heading to get enrolled sometime this month, and then tomorrow night I find out where I study for the next two years. Sort of nervous, I’ve banked everything on getting into QUT, and while I should (I have the marks) I’m still pretty freaked out.

I’ve been reading “Emergency & Trauma Nursing” which was reccomended by Ian over at impactEDnurse and it’s a great book, even though I’ve not started my RN course it’s given me a lot of new information. Booktopia had some dramas getting the book in from their supplier, so I had to keep on top of them, but they sorted that out. Highly recommended book if you’re interested in that sort of thing, and it certainly helps pad out your textbook shelf.

http://www.impactednurse.com/

Wahoo!

OK and I’ll be doing some updates later, I had a seriously cool last day of placement, but I have one more assignment to finish and then I’m free, so I’ll do that.

Just a quick word for the two moths that are currently reading this blog, hello!

I’m doing placement at the moment, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I know I have to do my RN’s next year, because I want more, more!

Our instructor had a great idea, which was to practise handling needles because a) IM injections are rare as hens teeth b) More confidence with devices that may or may not kill you is always good. We were originally going to use an orange (where did we come up with that, I wonder) but then the RN we were working with got wind of our plan and told us to roll up a towel, tape that, and put some comfeel over it, and I have to say, it’s an amazing idea. You have added protection, since the towel is both bigger and more stable, and the comfeel + rolled towel feels a hell of a lot more realistic than a goddamn orange.

Brilliant idea, and I’m sure I’ll pass it along when I have students one day.

Gosh, so, so boring.

I spoke to some people at the hospital, and they don’t run an observer program, which I can understand (small hospital), so I’m going to see if I can somehow wrangle it up in the larger public hospital over the Christmas holidays.

Catching up on all my assignment work, getting pretty close to the end of  my course, which is pretty… scary. In a good way.

Basically, it’s all quiet…

Well… yeah. Basically, that’s it. The semester is winding down, sort of, and with it things are getting more and more boring.

I’d love to have interesting, fun stories, but to be honest, the most interesting thing that has happened since the last update is probably related to the fish tank, so that gives you an idea on how amazingly boring things are.

I’m just going through the motions, doing assignments, reading texts and journal articles, learning.

Oh, on monday I’m going to see if the hospital I’m doing placement at allows observers, I’m going to try and pick up one or two shifts a week observing in the EMC or ICU, no idea if they do that, or if they’ll let me, but hey, can only ask.

Well, just a quick semi-update to keep things going.