Study visit to A&E

We had a study visit to the A&E (accident and emergency) department of Central Finland's central hospital here in Jyväskylä last Wednesday. We were going to see what happens to the patients when they arrive in the hospital. Were also going to see what happens to the patients who come to the hospital by ambulance since last week we practiced paramedics work on the field.
When we arrived into the A&E we were told about the triage nurse's job since everyone is going to meet him/her at first. The triage nurse is the one who makes the decicion what kind of care the patient will need. There are five different letters as a classifications for urgency of a patient. The most urgent patients will get classification A which means that the patient's care has to be started immediately. The next urgent patients get the B classification and their treatment has to be started within 15 to 30 minutes. Patients with classification A or B are usually the ones who come by ambulance and they are first treated in the so called shock room. In the shock room there are all the monitors needed and also there is easy access to the x-ray and CT. Patients who recieve the classification C will need care within two hours and patients with classification D will need care within three hours. Usually patients with classification C or D are the ones who come from home by themselves or the ones who come from health centre with a referral. These C and D patients go in the hospital either to the basic health care side or to the specialized health care side. There can also be patients with the classification of E which means that they won't need any acute care which means that they will recieve some care instructions or they are referred to the health centre to the doctor's or nurse's appointment. There are at least two triage nurses working all the time. The other one is for patients who come by ambulance and the other one is for patients who come to the hopital by themselves with a referral or not.
The A&E department of Central Finland's central hospital is open 24/7 and it is the only A&E department in the Central Finland and that is why there are patients coming quite far away aswell. The A&E department also has the basic health care's duty during weekdays from 4pm till 8am, during weekends from Friday 4pm till Monday 8am, and during the holidays. During those times there will be doctor's and nurse's appointment available for the patients with an E classification.
The visit was nice and even though I was a pretty familiar with the A&E I got lots of new information. It was also nice to see the shock room because you are not able to see that unless you are working at the A&E or you work as a paramedic. The visit was a bit shorter than we expected and it would have been nice to see the accident and emergency and infection ward (päivystys ja infektio osasto) but maybe some other time.

Simulation practices

We got started with our acute nursing studies yesterday when we had couple of different kinds of simulation practices in our skill lab lessons. We were supposed to act as paramedics in those simulation practices. There were three different cases. The cases included elderly patient with acute myocardial infarction, elderly person with a hip fracture, and a one-year-old baby with burns in his feet. It was quite challenging at first since I don't have any experience about emergency care but once we got started it was really fun! I also noticed that in all of those cases you could find the same connective thing which is the vital signs. So the basic things are the most important thing to remember in emergency care and in nursing on the whole.
We also had punch of  new "teachers" which was nice! The new "teachers" were nursing students like us but they already have some work experience from emergency care. For them being a teacher in these simulation exercises were part of their studies and the same kind of "teaching" is waiting for us aswell later this spring. It was really nice to hear how things are done in the field at the moment. It was also a bit more relaxed to do these simulation exercises with other students than teachers.Even though we have great teachers teaching us variety is the spice of life.
Overall it was a different day at school but I enjoyed it very much, learnt lot of new things, and went through some already learnt things. It was very productive day and I hope we'll have many days like this ahead of us!