It goes without saying that missing any of your clinical time is a bad idea. My program has no clinical make up time built into the schedule, and our instructors have advised us not to miss clinicals, period. But, one cannot control when they get sick. And, we really should not be continuing the line of thought that we should go to work/school/clinicals no matter how sick we are. It isn't good for the person who is sick... and it isn't sick for those they are exposing to their illness.

So, as luck would have it, last Sunday I woke up sick. I took some tylenol to try to bring my fever down and put myself back to bed for the day. I was hoping to sleep it off and be able to go in to my clinical Monday morning. By late Sunday afternoon it was obvious that was not going to happen. I e-mailed my instructor and let her know I would be heading to the doctor instead.

Yes, I was worried about how I was going to make up my clinical time, or even if I may have been kicked out of the program for missing time. But, I was too sick to go in, and my elderly patients did not need whatever illness I had. I'm a young, fairly healthy adult with a good immune system; most of the residents of LTC facilities are not. What is a uncomfortable, inconvient illness can be deadly for them.

As luck would have it, there were three of us sick and unable to make clinicals last week. We all went to our doctors, and were all diagnosed with the same illness. The incubation period would be accurate for us to have picked this up the week before in the LTC center. Maybe we did, maybe we didn't. We all spent a very uncomfortable week at home and (hopefully) will all be back in class and clinicals this week.

Our program has been kind enough to schedule us a time to make up the hours we have missed.

We are coming to the end of our second quarter! I can't wait for the week long break between classes!!

It's hard to believe how quickly this is all going. It seems like just last week I was starting nursing school; now here I am, almost finished with my second quarter! The pace of lecture and assignments is intense. We are constantly juggling multiple projects and homework assignments and seem to be always getting ready for the next test.

We took another ATI predictor test and according to the results, both my husband and my self have a 99% chance of passing the NCLEX. Wow! I'm in disbelief that I could have even a 10th of the knowledge necessary to perform as a RN.

Last week was our first week of second quarter clinicals. We are in the LTC setting again, I believe this is the last time we will be in LTC as we move to the hospital in summer quarter. This time we are being allowed to perform more nurse like duties. We can change dressings, insert or discontinue foley catheters, take blood glucose readings and give insulin and we get to do one med pass. I was challenged to work as a team with another classmate, and our assignment was 2 very heavy care residents and one fairly easy resident. By the end of this assignment, we were both exhausted and feeling much more nurse-like. And, although I went home both days completely worn out, I really loved every minute of it. This week helped silence the little voice in the back of my head that wondered if I was really headed into the correct career.

Today I head back to the LTC facility to pick out new residents for the rest of my second quarter clinical experience. I'm passing meds on Monday, so I was instructed to pick one resident with a nice long list of meds! I'll be spending the rest of the weekend looking up that long list of meds in my drug guide, and trying to get my project due this week finished so I don't have to work on it after clinicals.