Essay On Preceptorship

The site for my preceptorship is an inpatient dialysis unit. Dialysis treatments are administered to patients who are admitted for various reasons. Most of the time they are in the hospital for dialysis related problems, but there are other occasions such as surgery in which the patient will still need dialysis. The hemodialysis treatments are administered by registered nurses. The nurse is responsible for reviewing the patient’s prior treatment and lab data, setting up the machine, assessing the patient when they arrive, hooking up the patient to the machine, and monitoring the patient throughout their treatment. Throughout the treatment the nurse is documenting vital signs every 30 minutes. When the patient has completed their treatment …show more content…
I did assist my preceptor in doing vital signs and disinfecting the area after the patient’s treatment. For the tasks that I did, I feel like I did them adequately and efficiently. I did interact with the patient by trying to make them comfortable by providing a warm blanket when they were cold. My preceptor gave me a tour of the unit which included the water treatment area, and the area in which the dialysate system. There are a lot of details that I will need to learn for the overall dialysis nursing experience. As a dialysis nurse I will need to learn all aspects of the dialysis machine, clinical nursing skills on what to monitor for the patient during the treatment such as signs and symptoms when too much fluid is being taken off of the patient. For example, one patient started complaining of cramping and she became hypotensive. The intervention for these symptoms was to decrease and turn off the ultra-filtration rate and administer some IV fluid back to the patient. Despite these interventions the patient was still very restless and ready to discontinue her treatment approximately 30 minutes early. It was the patient’s choice to end her treatment against medical