Intitial Entry

My first placement is on the surgical specialties ward in RPH. I suspect that i will be exposed to a number of different surgical procedures over my five weeks at RPH and will be expected to familiarise myself with the individual post operative protocols for each. I have read through the procedures, precautions and contraindications for each surgical procedure that we covered during our cardiorespiratory unit, i am however expecting to be given access to a file regarding specific protocol instructions for each individual surgical operation.
As a fourth year student I expect my role will be to independently manage a caseload, performing assessement, treatement, ongoing management and a discharge plan for each patient. One of my concerns is my lack of exposure to a an inpatient hospital setting. I am nervous about identifying the different attatchments. I am also nervous about giving patients oxygen support, deciding what settings are appropriate for the patient and whether the patient is safe to mobilise without it. Throughout the semester we had alot of discussion about weaning patients off oxygen. I am concerned about my role in deciding when the patient is ready, and how quickly they should be weaned off the support. My next concern regards my ability to plan how i will mobilise the patient out of bed, using my manual handling skills to ensure that i do not put any stress on the incision site. My final concern is in regards to my ability to identify the medications that each patient is on and use my knowledge of the adverse effects to plan and adjust my treatment sessions for a safe and more effective session. In order to achieve this, i have tried to familiarise myself with some of the more common names and will continue to build on this repertoire as i come acome across more medications. I am looking forward to using my theoretical cardiorespiratory knowledge and applying it to post surgical patients with various medical histories, co morbidities and post surgical goals.