St. Luke's

So, I hear from Aleisha that a lot of people are asking about my job and how it is going. First of all, I want to say thank you very much for your thoughtfulness in thinking of us. St. Luke's has got to be one of the best hospitals to ever work for. I absolutely love it. I have only gone through one week of orientation so far, but I'll update you on it. The first two days of the week you spend a day and a half of it listening to everyone and their dog who heads up a department come and tell you what they are all about and how they can help you (from performance improvement to security to parking). The second half of day two we spent 4 hours doing computer assessments that informed us of policy and procedure at the hospital in various settings. This is where the fun starts. Day 3 we spent doing many self assessments. The first was an assessment of our interpersonal skills to see how we might respond to certain surprise statements. Then we were given 10 different situations in which we watched about a minute long video in which a patient suddenly gets some 'acute' symptom. We then had to determine what the medical diagnosis was, what interventions we would use, and why we used each intervention. Yeah, brain buster by itself. Then we spent the afternoon reviewing several 'skills' that we had to check off today (day 4). These included blood administration, IV's, epidural medications, PCA pumps, restraints, feeding tubes, sterile dressing changes, learning St. Luke's pump system, and some others. Then today we had to check off on all of those from memory, not using any paperwork. It was fun. Tomorrow we have more of the same scheduled as well as a fun and exciting medication calculation test. I actually do love it and St. Luke's really is so very good about everything. I love working here, and it will only get better from where I am at. Thanks for asking. I start on the floor next week so I'll try and remember to let you know how that goes.