Bring It On Home

My work at Flagler Hospital is soon to be done and I will be heading back to Fernandina to be with my family. I have experienced alot here during my time at Flagler. During my second week here, I experienced losing my first patient in the ICU. It was a very difficult thing to experience. For the first week and a half I was involved with the care of my patient. It was the strangest feeling when I came in the next morning and received the news. After this I knew I could not make a career in the critical care setting. Death is too common a theme. It seems like there is a code called daily. Most of them are Code blues where there has been a patient that went into cardiac or respiratory arrest. When I hear them coming over the intercom saying "Code Blue in Room ___", my heart just sinks. I can only think what if it's one of my patients?? And to be quite honest, the first thing I think about is whether or not they know the sweet saving grace of Jesus? It makes me want to be by their bedside sharing the good news instead of being at my computer monitoring their medications. One announcement I love hearing is when a baby is born. The sweetest lullaby comes over the intercom throughout the entire hospital. One day there were twins and they played the lullaby back to back.

During my time at the hospital I attended two P&T meetings (Pharmacy and Therapeutics). This is a meeting of about 10-15 doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. They meet monthly to discuss hospital issues and to come up with solutions to the problems. At one P&T meeting, there was a case presented about a mistake made by a nurse. The nurses that were present at the meeting were very defensive about the the knowledge that they hold. A solution to the problem was to provide educational material to "refresh" the nurses knowledge of pharmacology so they can differentiate on the front lines when something is not right. Well the ladies in the room said "You should not punish us all for one person's mistake of something she should have known once she graduated!" So I quietly sat back and listened to the back and forth discussion. The leader of the group said, "Ok well let me test you on some common nurse pharmacology knowledge and see how much you know since you graduated 20 years ago. Think about Lasix (furosemide, a loop diuretic used often). If the doctor chose to start Gentamicin, an aminoglycoside (also commonly prescribed), based on the pharmacology of these two drugs what would be your concern and what would you monitor in your patient?" I was like dun, dun, dun... you could hear a pin drop. He only wanted the nurses to respond and nobody said a word. In pharmacy world I immediately thought... the patients hearing!!! Because both of these agents together can contribute to ototoxicity or hearing loss. So needless to say I think we can all learn a lesson from here. Not one of us is more perfect than the other and we all have room to refresh our knowledge and learn new things (and old things again).

What else? I have spent the last 3 weeks straight tutoring the secretary so she could take the certification exam to become a certified technician. She took her exam last Friday and passed!!!! I was so proud of her! I will miss her the most!

After completing this rotation, I am terrified of becoming a pharmacist. Most days I feel so inadequate. But I learn more everyday. UF has provided me with a great education and handy tools so I know where to go look up an answer if I don't know it off the top of my head.

But I have learned all I am going to learn here in St. Augustine and it's time to go home.

Dave, get ready to have your snuggle bunny back :) I miss bed time the most :) I love you and thank you for being an AMAZING husband. You are such a wonderful encouragement to me and I am thankful I get to walk through this life with you by my side.