This week I was able to experience two really awesome things I had never been able to do before! On Monday, I was more than excited to be placed shadowing the Wound Care team. I practically jumped out of my seat as the teacher asked who would be interested in following them. The Wound Care team is a small group of nurses with special training in wounds who go from patient to patient cleaning, dressing, documenting, and preventing wounds. The previous day my friend Gweon had the privilege to follow the Wound Care team and had actually fainted while in a patient room due to the foul odor of a particular wound. I thought it was pretty cute when he walked up to me with a bottle of Vicks Vapor Rub in hand and said in his cute Korean accent, “I think you might need this Katie. Remember to sit down if you feel dizzy or nauseated.” So I grabbed the bottle, just in case. I wasn’t too nervous about the smell, considering smells don’t seem to bother me as much as eye or nose injuries-they, on the other hand, totally freak me out. As we got onto the floor, I spotted the Wound Care team from across the hall and was eager to introduce myself. The team was really nice and I felt comfortable asking them plenty of questions. We traveled from patient to patient inspecting wounds and taking pictures to document the progress of these wounds. As we progressed from wound to wound it seemed the patient’s situations were worsening. At first, there were some gruesome pressure ulcers but before I knew it I had seen a patient about to lose her foot to gangrene. Gangrene is necrosis, or death of tissue, usually resulting from absent blood supply. This patient was infact diabetic so her chances of gangrene were very high due to poor circulation. Most of her foot looked eaten away and black (from the dead tissue). I won’t go into more detail, but she clearly needed to have an amputation. We also treated a man who had been diagnosed with cancer of the ear-who would have thought? His ear or lack thereof, needed to be irrigated (cleaned with normal saline) and then the nurse applied an ointment and eventually a dressing. I thought following the wound care team was really interesting but I had no idea what I would learn all about the following day. On Tuesday, my patient was a Vietnamese man diagnosed with end-stage renal disease. After I read his chart and learned more about him and his medical situation I was ready to give my assessment but as I reached his room I noticed a man with a huge machine entering it. I put two and two together and realized this must be the nurse performing dialysis on my patient! Dialysis is the process of filtering out the blood via high-tech machine and restoring it with nutrients and eventually sending all the good stuff back into the body. We quickly introduced ourselves and Robert was ready to put me to work! I was thrilled-within seconds of walking into the room he was handing me tube after tube and guiding me where to secure it within the machine. This was so awesome! I was entirely setting up the dialysis machine. I was so curious about how everything worked and Robert was more than willing to answer all of my millions of questions. By the end of the shift he actually had me memorizing normal lab results that were important to understand when caring for a patient going through hemodialysis. At the end of the day, I felt very comfortable with the dialysis machine and was so fortunate to have had the opportunity to be taught by such a compassionate and intelligent man.
Katie VNSROP
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