PICU Unit Reflection

In my experience on the PICU unit, I only noticed one or two barriers in the patient education process. The first barrier I noticed was that a lot of the patients are not in a state of mind to be educated at the time they are a patient on this unit. Maybe this is not a barrier in the process, but just a barrier. However, I did witness lots of education being done, but directed towards the family. In my opinion this is a great way to get the education complete. Also, lots of times the family members will be the care takers for these patients after they are discharged. The only other barrier I noticed was the rush to get patients transferred to other units, or discharged. The rush to get rooms empty has a purpose, which I understand. Since being …show more content…
All medicine is sent from pharmacy, which is checked over by the pharmacist and checked against the prescriber’s orders to ensure they right medication is being sent to the floor and it is for the right patient. Pyxis is another great safety measure that is used. In my experience as a med-tech in assisted living facilities we used a large med cart that had every one’s medication altogether, which led to lots of med errors. I think the pyxis is great because it opens the drawer that has the desired medication in it. Also, every time I was with a nurse getting medication, she always double checked to ensure she was getting the right medication. Every time the nurses were administering medication, they always verified the patients name and date of birth, even if the patient was sedated. I was very impressed with this, seeing as how they could just assume they had the right patient and make a huge mistake. Safety wise, I think the only thing that should be improved is the nurses leaving medications on their computers while they walked away. This could lead to medication being stolen, being taken by the wrong patient, or an array of other things. I will say I never saw them leave narcotics, however any medication can be dangerous if it gets into the wrong …show more content…
The nurses seemed to care and want to build a therapeutic relationship with the patients. A lot of times the patients have no medical experience, and you have to meet the patient where they are. It can be a very hard thing to do sometimes, but anything to help the patient is worth doing. I honestly did not see any barriers in communication, however I am sure there were some. The staff did an excellent job on eliminating any barriers. I have taken so much from this clinical experience, and I truly feel I will be a better nurse because of this experience. It is always beneficial to be accepted into a setting where people want to help you, and I got that out of this experience. I wish our clinical rotations could be longer so I could soak in more and more information. I will forever be thankful for my clinical experience in the