ICU

Learning report:
1. This week I barely had any responsibilities, but I did get to grab and open biohazard bags for the nurse and take notes over everything.
2. I learned how the oral cleaning is done when a patient is intubated and I learned that nurses have to walk feces down to the lab, they can not just send it.
3. The best thing that happened this week was that I changed nurses multiple time to be able to see many different things.
4. The worst thing that happened was that I only really saw one patient.
5. This week was fair, I really liked the staff in this unit but I also realized that I do not wanna work were most of the patients are passed out the entire time.

Experience report:
Technology-
There are many different types of technology in the ICU, it has the computers and the scanning system for drugs and materials like every other unit for charting. It also has ventilators and IV and blood transfusion machines for therapeutic care. They also have the warmer for the wipes.

Diagnostic-
In the ICU the diagnostic care include taking samples of blood, urine and feces and send that to the lab for examination. They can also do arterial blood gas tests and if the patient is awake and has a special diet they can provide food for them.

Therapeutic-
In the ICU the therapeutic care include changing sheets and the patients linen, also cleaning of the patients. They also do oral cleaning to prevent infections of patients that are intubated.

Diseases-
Most of the patients in the ICU have either had a serious surgery or had something happen to them that made the body freak out. Some of the diseases I saw were patients with severe asthma that had lead to them passing out and that could have lead to neurological problems and one patients had too much CO2 in their body so they tried to fix that. There were also patients with surgeries, and one patients had a chest tube and tubes to drain the lungs of fluid.

Medical terminology-
ABG- Arterial Blood Gas
ICU- intensive care unit

Experience journal:
I. In the ICU the environment is pretty calm until someone codes, it is the unit were critical patients try to recover so it needs to be calm. The lighting is bright in the halls and a little dimmer in the rooms, but not as dark as they are in other units because most of these patients aren't awake. The smell is just like the rest of the hospital, it smells sterile. It is not a loud unit, the only thing you can hear are small beeps and nurses talking.

II. This was easily the best staff I have been around, they all got along and helped each other out. They also tried to make this experience good for me, which I appreciated! They are also extremely skilled, they have to be able to act quickly to stabilize someone who is coding, but also be patient because this is were most families loose a family member.

III. I learned how much teamwork goes into a staff in a medical unit. I also learned how to do oral care when a patient is intubated and how important it is to prevent pneumonia. Something that shocked me was that patients can eat by themselves in some occasions, I though everyone had feeding tubes in the ICU.

IV. This week was one of the better weeks at the hospital because I got to see the perspective of the unit from multiple nurses. It was also good because all the nurses were extremely nice and interested in what I wanted to do in the future and told me stories. the things i saw were also interesting, I wasn't just standing there by a computer this time.