Okay, I’m back! I could not leave everyone for a whole week to wonder how I did on my SPOTs test. I am not that cruel. So, I will get right to the point, I FAILED. However, it was only the pulse, and thank goodness I passed taking the blood pressure. Additionally, it was my first try, and I was sidetracked because I had a midterm the exact same day. My nerves were shot!
“What happened?”
As I was taking the radial pulse (counting the number of times I felt the pulse beat on the thumb side of wrist),I totally lost track of the time. So instead of counting the pulse for 30 seconds, and then multiplying the number of beats by two (to obtain the beats per minute), I counted the pulse for 35 seconds. Needless to say, my result was way off the professor's observation.
However, the silliest part about the whole scenario was that I knew I had counted too long. Therefore, I tried subtracting a few beats from my total, just to see whether I would be able to obtain the same result as my professor. Wishful thinking I guess, because that defiantly DID NOT work.
The moral of my story is to take your time, relax, breath, and NEVER guess. Oh,something else I realized was that I defiantly need to practice. Otherwise, my future patients could end up on unnecessary heart medications... and I highly doubt that would go over well!
How to take the radial pulse. Properly!
Clinical
15 years ago
2 comments:
Don't feel too bad about failing your SPOT!!! Many of us failed, including myself. I think the entire class was feeling the pressure of the midterm and it was also very frightening to be tested in that kind of manner.
I failed my random pulse point, which was a silly error. I'm glad that I was the student you had to redo your SPOT with.
Keep up the good work and good luck with the next SPOT!!!
Tracy
I agree with Tracy. It was our very first practical test and we were all SO scared. I think we all need to relax because I was stressed so much for our second SPOT test and I failed for something silly. Knowing the mistakes that we all made, I'm sure you'll pass. :)
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