Daisy Lin
Heyy everyone!
My name is Daisy and I am a junior in my spring semester, which means I have gone through almost all of the rotations already! This blog will focus on the four rotations you will be going to during your junior year along with my experiences and thoughts on them :). Keep in mind that you only do geriatrics during the fall and rotate between Obstetrics, Geriatrics, Medical Surgery, and Psychiatrics/Pediatrics during your spring semester. I hope you learn a lot!
GERIATRICS UNIT
You will begin your first ever Decker clinicals in the geriatrics unit! Decker does a great job preparing you prior to your first step at the hospital with their lab lectures, open ISPC hours, and simulations. Even then, you won't be alone your first time as you are paired with a buddy! It definitely can be intimidating, especially if you have no prior clinical experiences (like myself) but the support of a fellow peer and my clinical instructor really helped. Keep in mind that this is a rotation that will continue into your spring semester except then, it will be just you and your lovely patient! I think this is a great unit to start off in to really build a strong foundation in basic nursing skills and your interpersonal skills. You essentially have five hours to assist with breakfast, perform your head-to-toe assessment, and do a bed bath so use the extra time to really get to know the patient!
MED SURG UNIT
After completing my medsurg rotation, I can definitely understand why many suggest new nurses to start off in this unit. With confidence, I can say this is the unit where you will be the MOST hands-on. You get to enhance skills previously performed such as bedbath, breakfast assist, mobility assist, vital signs, and head-to-toe assessments but also develop new skills such as medication administration and glucose blood testing. There is that trade off because you are doing more physical work but you really do learn a lot and build a solid foundation. Everything that was taught in NURS 321 can and will be applied to this setting! This is also a unit that will be continued into the fall semester of senior year so keep that in mind as well.
OB UNIT
Unexpectedly, OB turned out to be my favorite clinical rotation and is a field I am potentially interested in pursuing now! OB, aka labor and delivery, is definitely less hands-on than medsurg and geriatrics as it is a lot of observing. You can be placed in either the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), labor and delivery, or post partum unit so you get to work with babies, mothers, and family members and there are just so many things to see. I remember being so excited to get to watch a delivery happen like HOW COOL IS THAT. I saw two C-sections, with one of them being the delivery of twins, and observed how nurses perform APGAR assessments on the newborn. I got lucky because it just so happened to be after I learned about the delivery process in OB class so I was really able to connect what I learned in the lectures to what I was seeing in that OR room.
PSYCH UNIT
You have the option to choose between psychiatrics or pediatrics unit during the spring semester of junior year, and whatever you don't take will be completed in the fall semester of your senior year. Personally, I do not think it matters which you take first as long as you have friends and a driver in your clinical group (as the psych placement is in Ithaca)! Psych is another one of those more observational rotations because you are working with patients often with a mental disorder. You also can not enter their rooms to perform assessments like you can with medsurg. However, these patients are usually outside in the common room and have scheduled activity/therapy sessions. I found this to be a really cool experience because I saw a lot of collaboration during the different therapy sessions and I loved talking with the patients!
PEDS UNIT
Pediatrics is a specialty unit that many students go to clinicals for at the Upstate Hospital in Syracuse! This will be about an hr and 15 mins drive and there is a parking fee of $21 so I definitely recommend car pooling! Since I completed my psych clinicals in the spring semester of junior year, I am currently completing my peds rotation fall semester of senior year. So far, it has been an amazing experience playing with kids and performing nursing care for a new age range. It can feel scary because of the parents and small size of the patients, but you will get through it! THEY ARE JUST SO ADORABLE <33 .. can you tell I love kids lol!
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All in all, you get to experience really cool and unique rotations during your junior spring semester. By exploring the different units, you will definitely have a better idea of what units you are interested in working for in the future! My advice is to keep an open mind when starting a new rotation. Even if it turns out to be a unit you know you are not interested in, hone in on your skills as a nurse and continue providing the best care possible for your patients! I guarantee that you will learn SO MUCH in the span of a semester and feel more confident than when you first started! Have fun guys and always remember your "why" in nursing <3!
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