February Blog

 During the month of February, I have volunteered at UMC for 6 hours (12 total hours for the semester as of this month). I did the same tasks of answering patient calls then informing the nurses of the patients' requests and restocking the refrigerator in the nourishment room with juice cocktails that are given to patients if they ask. One things that has always made me nervous during my volunteer shift is when I pick up a patient call, and I can't understand what they are saying. This has been due to a couple reasons such as the patient was not articulating clearly or the background noise (maybe from the TV) drowns out what they're saying. Those type of calls has always been difficult as I always needed someone's help to determine what the patient is asking for. If all else fails, I just call that patient's respective nurse and tell them that the patient has requested "something." In terms of how the class is going, it seems to me that the study load is less than last semester (though that just might be me), but the amount of presentations given to us this semester makes up for it. I've gotten a couple presentations done so far (including my endocrine presentation which is just one for the semester), so I feel a little better. Though I still have both of my Neuro presentations which seem to be the toughest (given that there is a quiz to go along with it) and longest. There is also a requirement of participating during the presentation which means that I would have to ask a question or make a comment which I have yet to do in any of the presentations. I was rightfully called out for this by Dr. Mostany. During our Mardi Gras break, I went on a cruise to Mexico and visited different islands such as: Cozumel, Belize, Roatan, and Costa Maya. Even though I had a good time on the cruise, I would not want to go on another one. Being stuck on a boat for a week without any wifi/internet to help kill the time was a bit agonizing. This meant that during the times that the ship was sailing, my activities consisted of eating and sleeping to pretty much.

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