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In the know: Test yourself with help from a teaching hospital

Stressed Out Nurses Weekly, December 29, 2008

Working as a nurse in a teaching hospital is a little like taking a guided tour with a pair of headphones, a map, and an expert tour guide—only there's also a guide-in-training who is struggling to learn the ropes. In other words, you have access to some amazing resources, but you must also be ready to work alongside students and residents.

Teaching hospitals inherently support an atmosphere that is conducive to continuous inquiry and learning. If you listen carefully, you can hear attendings, or physicians who have completed both their residency and their fellowship and are experts in their respective fields, quizzing students and residents on lab results, differential diagnoses, and more. If you're lucky, these sessions will occur in your presence and you will be asked to participate. In doing so, nurses develop critical thinking skills, pulling the what, why, how, and when of patient care together.

Consider what it might be like to work in a teaching hospital by completing this simple exercise. It will also be a great review:

1. Identify the most common diagnosis treated in the unit where you are currently working.
2. Try to sketch the basic anatomy involved (the sketch doesn't have to be neat!).
3. List medications or other treatment interventions currently utilized.
4. Write down what each one does for the patient, why it is being used, and potential side effects and outcomes.
5. Describe what the patient and his or her family need to know about this problem. Identify how you will help them meet this need.

Source: Stressed Out About Your Nursing Career, HCPro, Inc. 2008. Be sure to pick up your copy today!

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