Prompted Post #2: Code Of Ethics

Hospitals have a very specific code of ethics that they base their health care tactics on. A hospital setting is a very proffesional sphere therfore following ethical codes is required. Most people already do not want to be in a hospital as it is so it is extremely important to make the patients feel welcome and comfortable and most importantly that you and the rest of your staff is going to make them feel better. In my personal belief nurses and caregivers should always be respectful to eachother and to the patients, and also make sure to dress appropriatly. Nurses should always be wearing scrubs when they are practicing on patients in order to abide by the cleanliness standards of a hospital. Besides how one dresses it is also important to watch what you are saying to patients and other caregivers. You do not want to be joking around in a hospital becasue it is a serious setting and people are in pain behind every door, so you dont want that to be taken lightly. My personal beliefs mainly focus on staying profesional and making sure that the patients needs come before my own.

I did some research on the code of ethics of different hospitals and I found one that aligned with my own personal beliefs. The code of conduct for St John of God, Ballarat Hospital is a really good indicator of why it is important to act professional in a hospital. It lays out the things that should not be done at a hospital such as throwing equipment, inappropriate jokes to patients, especially racial slurs, dishonest behavior and the list goes on. I thought an interesting thing on their code of conduct was the fact that not being able to work as a team is against their code. I believe that in medicine working as a team and collaberating with others is absolutely necessary and I like how failing to do so is frowned upon in a hospital setting. Also their list touches on dressing appropriatly as well and not showing too much skin and other things of that nature. Again I think this is important just for sanitation purposes. Another one that I found to be extremely imporant is not criticising health care professionals in front of others. This is important because if the patient ever feels like the doctor /nurses made a mistake it could make them feel unsafe and they would probably not want to return to that hospital again. The code of ethics in a hopital is truly of the utmost importance.

I think that people expect to be treated a certain way when they walk into a hospital for health care. They want to be respected and treated as an important patient. They may not know the exact code of ethics but they deffinetly know how they want to be treated in a hospital setting. This is why it is even more important for health care proffesionals to follow their code of ethics. Not only for the patients sake but also for their own sake becasue failure to follow ethics can lead to being reported to the directors and could end up in job termination. Hospitals are a place that needs to function smoothly because when it comes to saving lives their is no short cut.

Open Blog post #1

My first open post is going to be about how I got into the nursing field and what I want to do in it. In my senior year of high school I got an internship at a hospital called St. Johns Providence. In was an urgent care and I worked on the first floor in occupational health. I would go in everyday for about 4 hours and help the other nurses take care of patients. I learned a lot of really cool things their and really felt like I was a registered nurse. They would let me bring patients in and take their vitals, I would get their height and weight then take them over to a board with different letters for a vision test. I learned that when performing a pre physical one must check vitals, then perform a vision test for color, distance and depth. Next was an audiogram which is used for hearing and after they did that I would hand them off to the Physician Assistant and I would be done. It was always very important at the hospital to wash your hands a lot and always wear gloves to make sure everything stays really clean and in tip top shape. It was really awesome to help out at the hospital and I felt like I was learning how to do everything really well. All the nurses I worked with where very nice and super helpful, always showing me little tricks and tips for things like getting blood pressures and things of that nature. Another thing they had me do a lot was drug testing. Since it was occupational health many people had to drug test for their companies, and it was a fairly simple procedure. You always had to make sure people were not bringing in fake pee or anything of that nature so you had to make them empty their pockets before they went in the bathroom. They even made us take the soap out of the bathroom until I would have the sample in my hand. We would have to wait for the temperature strip to show that the urine was the right temperature before I would put it into the machine. It was easy because the machine I put it into would test it on the spot then send the results to whatever company needed them so I never had to do too much computer work. This experience  really helped solidify what I wanted to go into in college and was a great opportunity to learn basic nursing skills. I will  volunteer again at a hospital when I have the time because I also need the hours for applying to nursing school. I think it will help me grow into a better nurse if I spend more time in a hospital setting and learning in a hands on sort of way.

Prompted Blog post #1

The medical field is one of the most important areas of work to be in. Not only do doctors save lives on a daily basis they are always researching to find new cures and anti-bodies. A common misconception about the medical field is that the doctors are the most important people. A medical staff consists of both doctors and nurses, and those nurses are not to be undermined. The nurses do a lot of work such as prepping patients, running diagnostics, doing physical exams and making the patient feel comfortable and safe while they are in the hospitals care. A hospital is a professional setting and therefor the nurses and doctors are always business like and respectful to each other and patients. Part of a nurses job is to make the patients feel welcome because most people do no want to be in a hospital at all. This means that along with being professional nurses must also be cheerful and friendly, and always have a smile on their faces.

In addition to always being kind and caring a nurse must also be smart and know many things about the human body. The body is an extremely complex unit and being able to understand it and put that knowledge into practice on a patient is no easy feat. In my quest to learn more about the field of nursing I picked up an anatomy textbook and began looking through it. Inside I saw many pictures and diagrams of different parts of the body and on each picture their were tons of labels showing all the different pieces that make up a specific region of the body. It was a little overwhelming to look through the book and see just how many parts it takes to build a hand or a foot, even something that seems relatively simple like your finger, still has bone, skin, blood vessels, fat, and all these different parts. This just shows how much knowledge a nurse has to retain in order to help people and save lives. A textbook on anatomy is an extremely helpful resource to use to learn more about the medical field and to understand the human body, but in my opinion hands on learning is far better. When you are actually working in a hands on environment it is way easier to retain information than just looking at a textbook. By flipping through the textbook I just started to realize why the medical field has so much schooling involved with it because their truly is a lot of information that needs to be known before you can start putting your knowledge to work on actual people. Until I know the human anatomy better I would not trust myself in an operating room or anything like that. All and all the only way to really learn all the different parts of the body would be by using a textbook though because you can not see the inside of the body, so the textbook is a wonderful resource still.