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…
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>.
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.
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.
I think I figured out why this blog is pretty boring, it’s reflecting my life.
I mean, I go to TAFE, study, sleep, eat. That’s about it. I have one day a week of placement, which is pretty boring in itself, most of my day is spent doing tasks which are really in an AIN’s scope, with one or two “oh neat” opportunities if I’m lucky.
Frankly, this stinks, but there really isn’t anything I can do about it; I find the med/surg ward to be incredibly, incredibly boring. I don’t seem to be learning anything, I’ve done more bed-changes than my first placement at a freakin aged care facility. Last placement was OK because my facilitator made it good, but I’m still trying to figure out our new one. He’s good, but very different.
I think the main problem is just there’s no real acuity to the patients. They’re all stable, just pottering around waiting for discharge.
That’s boring.
I’m boring.
This is boring.
I want more.
I will have more.
Now, seeing as I’m starting at basically the bottom of the rung on the health care system, at least in Australia, and I’m still young (I’ve only really just turned 20), I have a long time ahead of me to continue my education.
Currently, at the end of this year, I’ll be an endorsed enrolled nurse, which can do a lot of stuff with indirect/direct supervision from an RN, which is great. But…
I want more.
As such, I’ll be (hopefully, fingers crossed) doing my Bachelor of Nursing next year, which, thanks to my EEN training, will become a two year course, rather than three years. After that, I aim to gain some obstetric, gyne and peds experience, and do the CRNE (Canadian Registered Nurse Examination), and start practising in Canada.
After that, I’ve got a few more choices on what I may want to do.
a) After I get a few years critical care experience, I plan on applying to a CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist) school, do my CRNA training, and then become a CRNA in a large, central hospital which has lots of traumas and other interesting challenges.
b) Again, more critical care experience, but instead of CRNA school, completing a flight nursing course, and becoming a flight nurse. I don’t know, something about the enhanced scope, the rapid turnaround, and the sheer acuity seems to be calling towards me.
c) Complete as many post-graduate qualifications as I can, and work in a large trauma center.
Now, I’m sure these will all evolve other the years, and they’re rather lofty (speaking as someone who’s never actually moved out of his home town, a move to a whole different country, let alone hemisphere, is a big thing), but the state of advanced practise nursing in Australia leaves so much to be desired that I feel staying in Australia would leave me… wanting, so to speak. I want more scope.
On the other hand, I could try GAMSAT after I do my RN’s and apply to Med School…
impactEDnurse is closing down soon. I’d just like to thank him for the continued flow of interesting, fun and downright wacky stories that end up surfacing there, and I’ll be following his writing onto WobbleWax.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well, yes, I have. I can’t really say it’s because I’ve been too busy, it’s primarily because of a lack of motivation.
Which is somewhat of a kicker, because one of the reasons for starting this was to keep me motivated about my education. Live and learn, eh?
Hopefully over the next day or so I’ll write up what was in my reflective journal (which was itself sanitized) on here, might be interesting.
So far I’ve had my aged care placement, which was 80 hours, my first acute care placement (which was in a private ward at the local hospital) at 120 hours and I’m doing a further 120 hours this semester. Just a little update for you all.
Well, I’ve had sort of a rollercoaster of a week, going from good, to horrible, to good, and now hopefully it will even out to “tolerable”.
Last wednesday (the 11th) was our Anatomy and Physiology exam, and I was sort of… migrained out, if you catch my drift. But, anyway, I did that, and thought I did OK, and then on auto-pilot on the way home, when bad things happened…
Yeah, I had an accident. Good news is that it’s mostly cosmetic, and everyone was OK.
So the day after that, thursday, after getting driven to TAFE by my awesome mother, I handed my Health Care Plan in, which I think I did pretty decent at, and then went and waited for the bus.
An hour later (it takes 20 minutes to drive home oh god), the bus arrives and I get on to get to the bus exchange at the bigass (well, compared to most shops around here) shopping complex, where I proceed to buy a cheap copy of New Super Mario Brothers. (Awesome, awesome game by the way), and then wait for a bus. For about 45 minutes. 
Anyway, so I end up getting home, and attack my car to rip that giant dent out you can see in the picture so it’s slightly less ugly and slightly more “not gonna kill someone”. Finished that at about 2100, went to bed, got up, drove to TAFE. It’s an ugly, ugly car at the moment, but the damage is actually quite minimal (from what I can see anyway).
And now comes today, where we got our A&P exam results back. First off;
I PASSED!
But it was a close one, which I expected, and I’m glad to see that the answers I got wrong I knew before we corrected them, makes me feel better about my knowledge base.
Next piece of assessment is the presentation about early stage dementia and maintaining quality of life and independance, if anyone has any links or reccomended reading, please feel free to drop a comment 
