My time spent at the joint center was an interesting experience. My time was spent shadowing a registered nurse, along with watching each patient perform physical therapy. Since it was a Friday, there were only three patients on the floor, and all were getting discharged. Each of the patients were very different, there was one male and two females. I believe the overall purpose of this out-experience was to familiarize ourselves on how to provide care to someone that had just gotten joint replacement surgery. I think that it is most important to keep the patients moving after surgery to prevent any post op complications such a DVT. Overall the staff was very nice and friendly as I spent my time there; however, I wish …show more content…
The role of the RN in this setting is to provide patient care by doing assessments, giving medication, as well as managing the care. The educational level requirements to work in this setting vary from little education, such as a CNA. To a master’s degree, which would be the physicians. It is preferred that each of the nurses have background experience because the RN’s are usually alone most of the time, since there are only one or two on the unit. Each of the staff on the unit was friendly to me while I was there, but they unfortunately did not share those characteristics with the patients. The male patient was feeling very irritable, by speaking about death, and refusing his medication as well as therapy. None of the staff on the floor provided him with sympathetic communication that was needed in that situation. I believe that the situation could have had a better outcome if the staff listened to his remarks and therapeutically talked with him, rather than be monotone. Another thing I noticed, was during the dressing changes in the morning. While the physician was doing the dressing changes I noticed that she had not worn gloves for any of the three dressing changes that she had performed. A surgical wound should be treated as sterile. Needless to say, it was not treated as even clean. As mentioned above, there were not many patients, but the patient population that I witnessed was 55 years old up to 92 years old. The most common patient population is 50 year olds to 80 year olds. There are several pre-requirements that patients must complete for admission to this unit. One pre-requirement is that patients must read a guidebook that contains important information about total joint replacement, hospital stay, and recovery. Another pre-requirement is the mandatory pre-operative education class. The pre-operative class sets expectations for the