Clinicals...nothing like how we practiced.

I promised that once I did a couple weeks of clinicals that I would give you an update of my progress. Right now I am currently Honors status with my grades. YEA ME!!!! Second of all dealing with real patients is nothing like we practiced or learned. Changing a colostomy bag on a dummy is a lot more pleasant than changing one that is full of poo and the patient wont quite playing with it making it a bigger mess for you too clean and putting them at risk for infection. Giving a bed bath to a plastic dummy is a lot easier than giving a bath to a 700 pound woman. You think when you are in school even though you know that it isn't like that in real life a part of you thinks that it will be similar to what you are doing in the lab skills part. It still will never prepare you for the first time you see someone butt naked that you didn't intentionally want to see. Or the first time that you have to give an injection and the patient screams because they didn't want to get a shot. Or when you are having to help hold up the 700 pound booty to get to a wound that is in the crevice of a fold in her butt. I really value my education and am very grateful that we were given a decent one but I am sooo glad that we do clinicals early on. I would hate to be a new nurse and to never have literally seen it all.