The Intensive Art

Good Morning!

I’m drinking some amazing coffee right now. It’s hot, black, thick, complex, creamy, strong, smooth, flavourful, and sweet. Yes, my obsession with 49th parallel coffee continues. Currently I am drinking the Brazil Fazenda Serra Do Bone, which was the Cup of Excellence Winner #4 in 2006.  I received it as part of a shipment straight from the roaster. It’s pretty fancy stuff! And, I must declare, it is extremely delicious. How did I ever live without designer coffee? And, as I’m discovering, Starbucks just doesn’t count.

I wrote my last test for the physiology course of my critical care nursing certificate yesterday. I know I was panicked, but the test ended up being fairly simple. I’m not saying I did well, but I do know that the questions were much less specific and “nit picky” than previous exams. Although, perhaps I shouldn’t talk until I’ve seen my mark!

Now I can start getting ready for my next course. This one will be on critical care assessments.  Here’s the description from the calendar:

Examines various aspects of assessment within a physiologic systems framework, particular to acute/critically ill patients. Emphasizes analysis and integration of physical, laboratory and computer derived findings.

I am fortunate to already own one of the texts that is required for the course. It’s called Fast Facts For Adult Critical Care Nursing. I have been carrying it around for my med/surg shifts for the past few months and have found it very nice to have available. I find that the med/surg pocket books are a little simplistic for someone past nursing school. For example, I don’t really need a chapter on how to put an NG or Foley in. Where I DO need help is when something is going on with my patient is a little “over my head.” In these cases, I can find a good chunk of answers in this book.

Plus, I really like that it is in a small binder. I was actually able to add it into my daytimer as an all-in-one deal. I highly recommend this book!

The other textbook is ECGs Made Easy. I haven’t had too much of a chance to explore this offering, but I can say with confidence that it looks as though it has a nice balance of comprehensiveness and simplicity (don’t you hate when books “dumb down” the information–thereby losing a good chunk of important knowledge). It has many examples and I’m looking forward to the exercises at the end.

To top it all off, there’s a course reading package that I need to pick up from the College today. So, it looks like another busy four months of reading, studying, and writing tests.

If anybody is interested in these books, I’ll add them to my bookstore (see the tab up top) so that you can browse them further.

The only other thing I need to do today is take my car for an oil change. I’m loving my time off this Christmas. It certainly makes up for having almost no time off last year!

What is everyone else up to? Start blogging! I need something to read

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 07:57 and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.