Speaking
engagements are still few of the hardest things to prepare for. At least for
working professionals with a pink collar job who don’t seem to have a uniform
work-time schedule.
Few words to all nursing students,
case presentations don’t end when the schooling is over. For professional
growth and well, for requirements’ sake, it carries forward even after getting a
paying job. It’s a little awkward for me to use the phrase “paying job” though.
I have started a clinical job in
nursing that doesn’t pay much. But yes, case presentations come in even higher
level. The only distinction is that, I don’t get graded for my output this time around.
I together with a group of
workmates was actually set to present a case study last 14th of June.
Plus that we work in different shifts, we still haven’t come up with a final
case of a patient to present. That was supposedly what we had in line to look
for from the time we started our job last November but didn’t. Because of course
we are still wise to ways of procrastination. Teehee!
We lived through inconveniences
of preparation-- including the inadequacy of time, lack of thoroughly decided
options, and uhm, a meticulous supervisor whom we thought would give us flop
sweats on the day of presentation.
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| Drafting, finalizing, brainstorming. Group mates from left to right: Gen, Lily, Mae, Myra |
Having only 6 days left to work
on our case, we cannot for anything best take the leisure of time or to have
like nurses-meet-the-avengers sort of power.
Here’s what we had to do:
Headstart
We get lesser time each day. There’s nothing we can do otherwise so we firmly set our day 1 for obtaining consent from the attending physician, the patient and her family on the case presentation.
It really doesn’t need one with a dominant choleric type of personality
to dictate what is to be done. It only takes one small act of leadership from
anyone among the group to begin the work.
Wise Distribution
We arranged the second day for gathering all information as much as possible and assigning each member a task to work on.
While leadership and management styles work differently in each person
or group, what is important is to recognize what will work best-- authoritative
or lassie-faire especially when on cram.
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| Delegating, reading, researching (It's always good to combine printed and online references) |
Planning
Third day served for planning out how we would want the case presentation to go about.
Whether you’re expecting for accolades or a fair output, there is no good
presentation that happens without a single plan or goal of how you'd want it to turn out. Plan out, even for a little. Set a goal, no matter how small.
Inspiration
Day
4 made room for our first day of “The Making” process. Anyone familiar with
nursing case presentations would know that it is usually started with a short
introduction, and a touch of the patient’s comprehensive health history.
The comprehensive history is for
the most part boring during presentations. It is mostly a mere narration of all
the information about the patient. So we constructed something that would
create a more comprehensible and captivating way of presenting it by coming
up with a video reenactment in a documentary film-like format.
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| The video shoot locations |
Like photography, video making
is half shooting half editing. And we have encountered more than enough
challenges-- who to act as the subject, when to do the video shoot, what
editing software to use (and we would not recommend windows movie maker
for its unstable file setup) and where to get the balance between work and
sleep.
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| Shooting day. Straight from duty with barely enough sleep. From left to right: Gen, myself, Ariane |
Find something that won’t only get you to where you want but will keep
you there. Remind each other always of your goal and why no one should give up.
It’s not in times like this that counting who has worked the hardest matters.
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| The production team |
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| Editing and producing. From top then left to right: Ate Darl, Jan, myself, Ariane |
Sacrifice
We
tuned for finalizing our output and providing what each one had for suggestion
on day 5. We gathered in a place that is favorable for our working (with
available wall plug, wifi access which became two of our major problems in day
4, and good food, plus good music to set up the positive mood).
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| At Trio Cafe' |
Everyone has to make his own
part of sacrifice by staying up late, passing up a day of rest for the benefit
of the group.
Winston Churchill once said, “If you're going through hell, keep going”
and that I think inclined us to continue what we started. Each should not give up no matter how impossible things might seem. Even sometimes that
means not realizing everything that was planned so you still have to be
flexible.
Trust
Finally
came day 6, the judgment day should I call it. There was no turning back. The presentation pushed through in, pardon me for a little prate, positive way. Everyone was definitely proud of how it all came out.
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| The final preparation |
Our case presentation was by the
way about respiratory failure from acute
demyelinating polyneuropathy. We had a refined idea of putting an emotional
video for prayer which we took from youtube. Then said a courtesy to the
Philippine National Anthem followed by a powerpoint presentation of the
introduction, fitted with good visual theme and arrangement suitable for our
audience.
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| Our case |
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| On the Introduction: Justin |
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| On Anatomy & Physiology: co-red cross instructor, Ivy |
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| On Pathophysiology: yours truly |
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| On the nursing care plan: Alchie aka John Lloyd :) |
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| On the discharge plan and prognosis: Ariane |
Next was the creative video documentary film of the patient’s history,
plus a moderate innovation in the format of the presentation that includes-- presenting the nursing care plan in a focused charting format, providing a
consented and discrete photo of how our patient progressed from her condition.
The idea is to trust in the capabilities of all your group members. It
has always been said that two heads are better than one.
Lastly, we didn’t forget to have fun!
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| The group |
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| The candid shot. What's the sleeping all about?? :) |
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| Celebrations! |
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| Meal get together |
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Pardon me as well for including our idiosyncrasies and signature pose below:
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| The "in-love" smile |
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| The "pogi" pose |
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| The "nyora pose" |
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| The feeler pose |
Photo Credits:
google (dot) com (slash) images- 1st photo
