CT Post article - Nov. 8, 2004
Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, CT)
November 8, 2004
Section: Local/Regional News
"You really have to be on your game"
By Linda Conner Lambeck
Fairfield senior helps patients in fight for life
 In a small conference room on the seventh-floor oncology ward at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, Karalee C. Rovelli and a half-dozen other nursing students spend the final hour of a six-hour shift talking about their experiences.
There's a lot to go over for the Fairfield University students. It's been an emotional morning of patients with complex problems, some facing death, others incontinence and the loss of motivation.
"Life is pretty precious. People are going to work hard (at staying alive). The dignity of the patients up here, it constantly amazes me," Pam Dudac, a registered nurse and Fairfield instructor tells her students as the door swings shut.
A 21-year-old senior, Rovelli rises at 5 a.m. every Wednesday this semester to carpool with two other nursing students to St. Vincent's. They usually stop at Dunkin' Donuts and report by 7 a.m. to fulfill the clinical portion of a Med/Surg II Class.
Dudac, her clinical instructor, goes through patient charts the night before to match students with patients.
Normally, Rovelli is assigned one patient. Occasionally, it's two.
"I couldn't have done that last semester and now I can. I've lost that initial nervousness," Rovelli says. "Plus, I have a great clinical instructor. You can ask her any question."
Wearing white pants, a red Fairfield U polo shirt and squeaky white shoes, Rovelli has already taken vital signs of today's assigned patient and fills out a report in longhand while he is downstairs getting a treatment.
It's been a busy fall, she says. Aside from this clinical experience, she also spends one day a week as a student nurse at Holland Hill School in Fairfield. She's taken tests and seen presentations and received evaluations in her four classes.
She deems Holland Hill a good experience. "I got to learn (that) a school nurse does more than hand out Band-Aids," she says.
There's vision screening, lice screening, helping diabetic students with their insulin pumps. Coordinating care with parents. "I couldn't believe kids (who are) 5, 6, 7 can prick their finger; put (a drop of blood) on the strip, put it in the machine and read their glucose that tells them how many carbs they can have for lunch," she says.
Midway through a sentence, Rovelli is called away to help her patient, who has returned from tests, get back into bed.
It takes three nurses to hoist the 54-year-old Stratford man, Nelson Polite, to his hospital bed.
The door to Room 760 swings shut so Rovelli can get Polite cleaned up and comfortable. She gives him an insulin shot, making sure there are no air bubbles. She's drawn insulin plenty of times before. She did it for her grandmother.
"You have to be so accurate," she whispers to herself. Then, to her patient, after the shot: "All right, now I'm going to take your vitals."
"You're hard to hear this afternoon. You were clear as a bell this morning," she tells Polite, tugging at her stethoscope. Mylar birthday balloons hang from Polite's bedpost. A TV is on overhead.
Water poured and pillows propped, Rovelli coaxes Polite to lie on his side to avoid bedsores, which she tells him would be painful. "It was a pleasure," she says, as she turns to leave. He nods.
Before she heads off to conference, Rovelli fills in the computerized version of Polite's chart, then grabs a yogurt she brought from her campus apartment.
During conference, some discussion revolved around patient motivation. "If (patients) see the value of something, they are more likely to do it," Dudac advises.
Much of the discussion focuses on other patients who spent the morning fighting death.
One patient seemed a totally different person from the one student nurses had cared for a week earlier. The downhill progression was startling. They felt badly for the wife, who had previously "seemed so hopeful." Another patient, they related, remained alert and talkative, even after having resolved unfinished business with an estranged sister.
Lindsey Mulvihill, another Fairfield senior, said it's good to discuss the cases before they go home. It's hard to make her roommates understand.
Three weeks earlier; Mary Ann Samatowitz, Rovelli's maternal grandmother, lost her own battle with cancer in Springfield, Mass. She was 76. Rovelli went home for the funeral.
Samatowitz was a strong woman, according to her granddaughter. "She was independent and very opinionated," she said.
Retired from the telephone company, Samatowitz and Rovelli, in recent years, enjoyed watching soap operas together.
They'd also do lunch. "I'd drive, she'd pay. It was great," said Rovelli.
Her grandmother seemed OK until two weeks before she died, Rovelli said.
Dudac says this group of student nurses is a good one, and will be ready to move on at the end of the year.
"They're so independent. They challenge me. I was running ragged the first hour because they wanted to get everything done," she says of her students. The students must spend summers working in hospitals. Rovelli has worked the past three summers at Bay State Medical Center in Springfield.
Linda Conner Lambeck, who covers regional education issues, can be reached at 330-6218.
Photo : Tracy Deer for CT Post.
(c) 2004 The Connecticut Post. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Media NewsGroup, Inc. by NewsBank, Inc.
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