Letter to the Students N106



Letter to the Students

N106 Nursing Concepts in Care of the Expanding Family

Welcome to Nursing Concepts in Care of the Expanding Family. All nurses need to have a clear understanding of maternity nursing whether you will ever enter the specialty or not. The next five weeks of the course will go very quickly. In the theory portion, two hours a day on Mondays and Thursdays, you will be learning about prenatal care, diagnostic tests to evaluate fetal health, care during labor and delivery, nursing care of the newborn and post partum care. There will be three unit tests, each worth 20% of your final grade. The quizzes will be given during the first part of the class and will start on time. No extra time will be allotted if you come in late. You will only be allowed to make up the quiz if you have a doctor’s note. The final exam, worth 32%, will be comprehensive with an emphasis on the last unit. To obtain a basic understanding of maternity nursing in 5 weeks is a challenge. It will require many hours of reading and study. There are four study guides that you will need to complete before class so you can participate in class. You will receive 1% for each one. The study guides need to be completed on the due date. No credit will be given for incomplete study guides and no credit is given for late papers. This includes late papers related to absences. A weekly computer assignment will be worth a total of 4%. Extra course credit will be given for achieving a prearranged score on a national test. Tutoring for theory will be on the Mondays.

In the clinical portion you will be caring for a family in labor and delivery, an infant in the nursery, or caring for mother and baby in post partum. Because you may be in an area of nursing that has not yet been covered in theory, an all day nursing laboratory will provide you with an introduction to all three areas so you will feel more confident in clinical. This introduction will occur on the first Wednesday scheduled clinical day and will be held at the college in the nursing laboratory on the day shift 7-2 and for the evening shift 2-9. During the orientation lab you will learn an introduction to fetal monitoring, labor and delivery, post partum assessment, and newborn assessment and baby bathing/diapering. You will watch a variety of videos to help you understand the various needs of the fetus, mother, and infant. An excellent Meds Pub Program is available to you and is assigned during the five weeks. It will aid you in applying the concepts used in maternity nursing. You will be introduced to it during the first lab and encouraged to supplement the reading with it.

You will be in clinical two days a week from 7-2pm or 2-9pm. These longer days will give you an opportunity to learn how to relieve classmates for lunch/dinner in an organized manner. During conferences you will present topics to your classmates such nutrition during pregnancy, infertility, contraception, adolescent pregnancy and infections in pregnancy. This information will not be covered in class but will be on the theory tests. Much of the emphasis of maternity nursing is teaching. You will need to focus on your teaching skills. In clinical you will be completing three care plans and included with each care plan will be another assignment. When you are in labor and delivery you will create a case study and complete an APGAR on the newborn. During mother baby care you will complete a care plan on the mother and mapping. When you are in the nursery you will complete both an infant and a gestational age assessment. Generally this is a time of great pleasure and satisfaction for both yourselves and the patients you are caring for.

During the last scheduled clinical day you will be at the college from 8am until 12pm to take computer tests. You are scheduled for a national computer test from HESI about Maternity and if time permits you will take the Maternity Pharmotherapeutics exam in N160. There also may be time to meet with your clinical instructor to obtain your final clinical evaluation. We, the nursing faculty, want to provide you with exposure to maternity nursing that will be educational, rewarding, and fun.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download