CyberKnife technology is truly amazing. I hadn’t really known what it was or what it could do until I accepted my new role. CyberKnife performs stereotactic radiosurgery. Big fancy words for using very high doses of radiation to obliterate tumors in the body. Not to be confused with Gammaknife, that is only approved for intracranial use. Also, not to be confused with standard radiation therapy. CyberKnife is used on tumors in the brain, spine, lung, prostate, live, pancreas and other tissues in the body. Not yet approved for breast tumors, but studies are being done presently to see if it will be approved in the future. Not only does it obliterate tumors, it does this with sub-millimeter accuracym which means that we can treat the tumor with radiation without damaging the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor.

The linear accelerator (machine that produces the radiation beam) is mounted to a robotic arm that is linked with multiple computer programs that can track the movement of the tumor during treatment. It is hard to explain in a few sentences, so I will link you to our website to learn more. Let me tell you though, it is truyl impressive to watch. The success rate is huge and to do this with no pain or blood and minimal side effects is amazing!

Our commercial will be playing on local stations starting July 6th, but you can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7vUbbK5kNE

Our website is very informational www.denverck.com. We have videos that can show the process the patient goes through as well as the treatment itself. It is truly amazing to watch in person.

We have named our CyberKnife robotic arm Ray, and you can follow Ray on twitter at www.twitter.com/denverck. He tweets often about the  occurences in the office and educates it’s followers about the treatments.

You can also become a fan on facebook http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/pages/Lone-Tree-CO/Denver-CyberKnife/114495996141?ref=ts

I am so excited to be a part of this cutting edge technology that looks like it should be in the new Star Trek movie. Please learn more about where the future of medicine lies…

I see a lot of nursing students wanting to be spoon fed the information, wanting to do very little work to learn this information. Granted, there is A LOT of information to know, however work needs to be done to incorporate and apply this knowledge into many different settings and scenarios. I don’t see the students going that extra step to apply the knowledge. This scares me as an instructor and as a potential patient.

This is the mind set that no nurse or nursing instructor wants to see. This action tells me that the students that I am teaching are in the wrong mindset. They are not interested in learning all they can to be a great nurse. They are only interested in passing the test, scraping by and being mediocre nurses. So I pose this question to you? Do you want to be taken care of the nurse that tried their hardest to learn as much as they could or those that did as little as they could to just get by?

As a nursing instructor, it makes me cynical as to the new generation of nurses that we are breeding. Will we have a generation of nurses that can acquire the critical thinking skills needed to be a proficient and skilled nurse? Who is to blame for this next generation? Is it our fault as instructors or is it the mindset and work habits of the students?

I don’t want to see the students sitting around during lab practice or in clinicals, not taking every minute to practice their skills or soak up every opportunity to learn something new. I don’t want to see the bored faces of those that think they have practiced enough or say they know how to do it, and then come finals time, show me that they cannot do the skills and just barely pass.

I no longer want to see my nursing students with a sense of entitlement, saying “I paid my tuition, so give me my diploma”. A diploma is not just a piece of paper, it is a symbol of the education you earned. I want to tell my students that they don’t need to know this for the test and for their pencils to keep frantically writing.

I want to be a proud instructor of the students that are graduating. I want to feel safe, that if I were to open my eyes while laying in an ER and see a former student standing over me, that I can lay my head back with the confidence that I will be well taken care of. I don’t want the feeling of worry that the former student would say “that wasn’t on the test” and therefore they didn’t need to know it to take care of me.

Let me further explain this concept. Why do we put a larger gauge needle in the AC when we are giving Vancomycin? Why do we give our second NS flush at the same rate as our IVP med? Why do we aspirate before giving the IM injection? Why don’t we crush certain medications? In nursing school we were always taught to perform a task a certain way, but did anyone ever teach us the reason and rationale as to why we are doing it that particular way. Most instructors are great at telling us how, but very frequently leave out the why. I think we fail our students by leaving out the rationale behind the lesson. This is what will make the difference between task oriented nurses and nurses who can critically think and reason through a problem.

I was told once that if we explain to our patients why they need to take a certain medication or why they need a procedure, they are more likely to consent or be compliant. Shouldn’t this be true for nursing students. I think nursing students will perform better in their skills if they understand why they are doing something and comply more readily if they know the importance behind it.

As a nursing student, you should always ask yourself why. “Why am I doing this and why am I doing it this way?” If you can answer the question of why, you are well on your way to being a fully competent nurse. If an instructor asks you why, please do not be content in saying “I don’t know”. That is not the right answer. Think through and give it your best shot and then go look it up. Nurses should and will always have a reason as to why they do something. If you ask them their reasoning behind a certain task, and they can’t tell you, think long and hard if you want to trust what they are doing.

I always try to educate my patients as to why they are getting a medication, what to expect while it is infusing and the side effects that may occur later. One of my patients went to the local emergency room for urgent care and his wife asked the nurse what medication he was getting and why he was getting it. The nurse actually replied, “I don’t know”. How crazy is that? Do you ever want to look as stupid as that nurse looked to that patient and his wife? The answer is ‘no’.

Please realize that most things nurses do have good reasons behind it and knowing those reasons are the true key to being a great nurse versus a mediocre one. Those ‘whys’ are difficult until you get used to them, but as challenging as they may be, they are imperative to the independence of your skills as a professional nurse and a nurse that thinks critically and thoroughly.

• A med/surg floor can offer up the most opportunities for the general nursing skills. All those skills you learned in nursing school that you never got to practice in clinicals? The med/surg floor is the only place that will give you the opportunity to practice them all. Some specialties might have some skills, but overall, the med/surg floor will have almost all of them. So you can practice and get good at those skills.
• In addition to practicing your skills, you will also just be able to increase your general nursing knowledge on med/surg floors. We all graduate from nursing school feeling like we know nothing. Nothing about skills, nothing about diseases, nothing about meds, etc. These floors have basic and complicated diseases, disorders and procedures. You will gain a general knowledge of most diseases on this floor other than the same disease I deal with everyday in my current job, cancer. It will make you a more rounded out nurse, and possibly open your eyes to a new specialty you can pursue later on in your career.
• It is a great place for time management. In nursing school they taught you about time management and then gave you a maximum of  3 patients. And even then, you weren’t solely responsible for those patients. If something happened, there was always someone to back you up. You weren’t admitting and discharging and taking orders off the charts. In school, it was different. In the real nursing world, time management is very different. You are juggling 5 patients with different tests and appointments and medications and schedules. Then you have an admit and a discharge and you transfer someone all while one of your other patients is going down the tubes. This is when prioritization and time management become key. You will not get the best experience in any other specialty as in med/surg nursing.
• Going along with time management comes organization. You have to organize your patient information and keep 4-5 different sets of  medications, report info, appointments separate and not mix them up. It is really easy to mix up patient information and give incorrect medication, chart on the wrong patient, etc. Organizing your priorities and the cares for your day. Lumping activities together so as to not go into the room 10 times when you go in once. That is a big lesson your first year out of school.
• Medical/surgical floors are where the true shortage in nursing is. Everyone in school now wants to specialize. So then everyone is fighting for specialty opportunities and everyone on the med/surg floor is making double time and more per hour to fill the extra need for nurses. I was called almost every day off I had while working on the med/surg floor to see if I wanted to come in for extra pay because they were short staffed. If you want job security in nursing, you will find it on the med/surg floor.

Even though I spent my first year on a med/surg floor, I wish I had known why I was being told to go. It would have made me more excited to know what valuable information I would be gaining from it, and it probably would have made me pay a little more attention. I hope this info helps a little bit that when one of your instructors tells you it is a good idea to spend at least your first year in med/surg nursing, you will know why and not think they are getting compensated for saying it. And no, I am not being paid to say it either.

They can be your advocate, helping you find your way. Help you find that perfect job, or give you an in where they already work, keeping an eye and ear out for you. They could write you a letter of reference, helping you get the job of your dreams.

Sometimes, family and non-nursing friends are hard to talk with about nursing school and/or the profession of nursing. Your mentor can be an listening ear, letting you talk about all you concerns and fears, and answer any questions you may have.

Most nurses have lots of advice and thoughts and opinions about many things nursing and we are more than happy to give those thoughts. I had a few instructors and a few preceptors I wish I had done this with. I regret not keeping in touch with them as I would have learnd a lot. However, I did meet some wonderful, caring “seasoned” nurses in my first year, who became my mentors and who were in valuable to my success. I still keep in touch with some today.

Always keep it in the back of your mind, who might be a good mentor to you, and I always say, you can never have too many mentors, as they will all offer something different.

Thanks for the support alltop.com!!!