Christmas

I have a couple of days off now before my fourteen hour shift christmas day. Myself and my fiancee are currently on the A34 on our way to Cheltenham where two of her friends are getting married tomorrow. I have recently discovered how to post by emailing from my phone. Empowered by the spirit of adventure I thought I'd use this system for posting today and I've even tried to add a picture of my first activity when I get to Cheltenham. Although I'm not sure of I can add pictures this way.

I'm glad to have the day off. My body is still aching from my shift yesterday. My ward is the only ward in our division that isn't closed to admissions due to diarrhoea and vomiting. This means that when ICU needs to move a few patients out to make room for the very sick all of their high care patients are coming to us. Every patient I cared for yesterday was very sick. I am very proud of myself, I did not bow to the pressure of my superiors to work faster and spend less time with each patient. I took my time, prioritised and yes I did forego my breaks and I even left an hour late but everyone one of my patients became stable largely due to my actions. I even found the time to feed two patients and acquire some mouthwash for one patient who has developed very painful mouth ulcers which are limiting her nutritional intake.

Having spoken to the other newly qualified nurses on the ward we are all equally displeased and have even gone as far as saying we are wasting our days off panicing about our next day at work and who we might be working with. The knowledge I am not alone in feeling this way has helped me considerably. I am enjoying the acuity and the patient groups. Who I work with and the lack of support are obstacles to be disregarded until such a time as they can be overcome.

I wish all of my readers a very happy Christmas. Eat well, drink to the upper range of your limits and most importantly be safe.
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Vintage Whine

So it turns out that I'm not enjoying being qualified. I am enjoying the job, just not where I am doing it. I am entirely unsupported and the team I'm working in consists of people who don't know or like each other. Not exactly a friendly environment. I have to admit I am currently living day off to day off.

I was trying to hold off posting until things picked up however all evidence suggests this won't happen so here I am submitting another whiney post.


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Qualified

Yep, the title says it all. I am now a qualified nurse. I have completed my course and been given an entry on the Nursing and Midwifery Council(NMC) register. I have started a job as a Staff Nurse on a general ward at a local hospital. The last few weeks have been filled with a sense of blinding terror and headaches induced by all the new paperwork in this new hospital. As soon as I qualified I felt I had forgotten everything I had learned over the last three and a bit years. Fortunately this doesnt appear to be the case.

I have enrolled on a preceptorship program. This effectively gets my post-qualification education off to a good start. Including things like respiratory and cardiac study days. I also have a semi-experienced nurse on my ward who is there to assist my development. Its all very cool.

I have been working on my ward for three weeks now and I have to admit I am only just starting to find me feet. During this supernumerary period I am supervised in everything I do. This is accompanied by phrases like "You dont have to do it this way but its how I do it" from the senior nurses which of course oblige me to "do it their way" whilst they are supervising me. I finally started finding my feet when we were too understaffed to allow me any supervision so I could do it all my way.

I have to admit there is a large part of me that regrets not going straight to A&E but I still believe its essential to my core development to get experience in a specialty area first. I am however missing my highly acute patients, we have had one or two on my ward but most of the patients have fairly high care needs but few medical or acuity needs. As is true on a lot of wards in a lot of hospitals many of my patients are in with us for a "social sort out", they have complex or increasing social care needs and need a bed with us whilst social services work their magic. I fully appreciate the importance of this system for the patients however I believe there should be special wards designed just for this purpose so social patients arent taking up acute care beds on wards with staff with specialty training and experience.

There we go. My first post back, my first post as a qualified nurse ending in a micro-rant.

Politics

I'm currently on a break from university. This time is intended to allow us to apply for jobs and prepare ourselves for life in the real world. Many people have asked me what it feels like to almost be a qualified nurse. To this I tend to explain that if I were a blacksmith having completed an apprenticeship I would be considered a journeyman blacksmith. The journeyman is someone who has fully learned the core of their trade but is far from being a master. I am soon to be a journeyman nurse.

Whilst I am waiting to start my final placement I have been getting rather interested in the political situation. Over the last two weeks I have found my self at one point or another supporting each of the three main parties. After weeks of seeing the pro's and con's of each of the parties I have come to the following conclusion. I really dont care who is in power, all I really want is for tomorrow to be more or less the same as yesterday. Where there are sick people there will always be nurses. so I will always have a job(a job I love), I have a mortgage, a gorgeous fiance and a very mischievious cat. My world is a near perfect place. In the coming years there are things which may further enrich my life. By and large nothing that truly matters to me will be effected should any one of the party leaders become prime minister.

Time off.....AGAIN!

I am approaching the end of my course, qualification awaits. All I have to do is pass this final placement. Which given the proficiencies I have to demonstrate shouldnt be a problem. These a proficiencies that frankly any third year student nurse should have been proving for over a year now.

The trouble is I am currently on a very very long easter break from this placement. Eight weeks!. Most people seem to enjoy a bit of time off. I love the odd day doing nothing. However there are no bank shifts going at my hospital due toa combination of closing wards and everyone else being off and wanting work. My personal problem is that when I am left without work for a prolonged period I always seem to find a way to very expertly derail my life. This usually involves a combination of boredom and either over-exercise or over-drinking. Whilst alcohol doesnt cause me to make as big a fool out of myself as it seems to most people. It does trigger a massive personality change in which I become a complete and utter bastard. Fortunately for me I am marrying a girl who knows how to handle this. Generally with strong words or a series of increasingly painful slaps around the back of the head.

I just get sooooo bored when I have no work to do.

Note to my Patients

Dear Patients

When you come to my Accident and Emergency department complaining of chest pain and I ask if you have any history of heart problems could you please tell me the truth. When you say "No" I assume you havent had those two myocardial infarctions you will later tell the doctor about. It doesnt matter that they were "only minor" when you lie to me it scraps whatever credibility I may have as a student nurse with the doctors. When a patient is diabetic we know to double the number of cream cakes they say they have eatten today, when they are smokers we know to treble the number of cigarettes they claim to have smoked, and with alcoholics its always a factor of four. This should not be the case with heart attacks.

When you do things like this it makes me angry, and there is only one way my professional armour allows me to deal with that anger. So when you lie to me and make it look like I cant take an accurate history do not become upset when I become extremely sarcastic. Please remember when you lie to me, that although I may not have a fancy stethoscope around my neck my fraying patience is the one controlling your oxygen supply.

Yours ever so sincerely

Disgruntled Student Nurse

Dark Place

I was going to write about a shift I worked recently which was woefully understaffed. I was going to write about issues concerning patient and staff safety. I was going to let off steam regarding the complete absence of the most fundamental of ward equipment on this ward. I could go on.

In fact I did write about the above, I even posted it. Then I deleted it. Its rare that I am left to feel this helpless. No serious harm came to anyone during the shift. So it would not be considered a priority. Infact we hit all our targets. I considered writing an incident report about this shift but the people who read incident reports are the people who put myself and my colleagues in that situation. They are also the people I was shouting at all day to no effect. When a patient or member of staff gets hurt the incidents will be noted by those high enough up the chain of command to change things. I just hope that it doesnt take a death.