Thankful for technology!

Well we all survived our crazy week of exams!  Pharmacology, basics, and pathophysiology all within 8 days.  It has definitely been a struggle learning to balance everything to be able to study enough in each class and still spend enough time in technological transformations and research.  I've learned a great deal from reading various articles on current nursing informatics news.  It's interesting to see how quickly technology in health care is evolving, even down to the education level.  The most recent article I read investigated how a nursing program assessed their students' technology competencies.  The instructors encouraged the use of technology and computers, and then assessed how those skills helped their students after graduation in the clinical setting.  The instructors found that web based classes and requiring students to use computer charting in clinicals greatly helped their students when they went into their own practice.  I found this very interesting with all of the changes nursing schools are going through in relation to informatics.  It's amazing what can be accomplished with online classes today.  This morning my research group met to discuss our project for the semester.  We had one classmate video (Skype) in with us since she could not physically attend our meeting.  Technology is pretty cool! Luckily we were able to come up with the research question for our project and we can now start reviewing literature.
During the stressful times of this program, I am so thankful to have these wonderful classmates by my side!  I know God has placed each of us here for a reason and we will all make it through one way or another :)

Exams Round 1

First pharmacology exam is over!  With the stress of all of our classes and assignments, I've had to make a big effort to find ways to lower my stress so I can actually get studying done.  I'm sure like many others, I have had the question "what have I gotten myself into?!?"  Those moments are when God has reminded me that He has placed me and all of my classmates in this program for a reason.  He will not fail us, we just have to continue to push forward and jump through the hoops of graduate school.  What an awesome God we have!
Next week includes our first basics of anesthesia exam and our first pathophysiology exam.  What a relief it will be to get through both of those.  As soon as the pathophysiology exam is over, it will be time to work on our group DNP project for our research class, and start coming up with ideas for a google docs survey.  The "to do" list never ends! :)  Whenever I get overly stressed, I need not look further than my own apartment with our cat, Rascal…

Start of Second Semester

After an almost too long Christmas break, the stress of being in graduate school has already come back with a vengeance.  With harder classes, more books, and more assignments, this semester is proving to be the most difficult so far.  Much of the stress of last semester centered around adjusting to being a newly wed, becoming a full time student again, and my husband's new travel job.  This semester is bringing all new stressors, but also much excitement.  We are finally getting to learn about anesthesia!  I am looking forward to the semester ahead and the knowledge I will gain.