Friday Morning Activity

Today Kalie, Ryland, Aubrey, and I all attended a class with the other dietetic students. In this class there was about an hour lecture discussing how to take a patient's blood pressure, blood glucose level, and urine analysis. Once that hour was over, we all paired up and began to practice these three things! Ryland and I were partners during this activity. We began by taking blood pressure, which she already knew how to do very well because she is an exercise science major. I, however, had a lot of trouble with it, and although I tried many times I could never quite get it right. The instructor ended up letting me use the electronic machine to take Ryland's blood pressure. After taking each other's blood pressure, Ryland and I moved to the blood glucose measuring station. Ryland went first and pricked my finger about three times before she got enough blood to put it into the machine. Luckily, the needle did not hurt. My blood glucose level was 5.1, which is a normal level! Then it was my turn. I had to prick her multiple times as well (twice)! Next we moved on to the urine analysis (actual urine was not used, it was actually tea). We dipped testing sticks into the tea and waited about 20 seconds for different colors to appear on different areas of the stick. The stick measured for things such as glucose, nitrogen, pH, blood in the urine, etc. Because we were measuring tea and not actual urine all of the levels either came out low or negative, depending on what they were. Today was very fun and I learned a lot! I just need to continue practicing how to take blood pressure; it was a lot harder than I thought it would be!