Balance

Its taken several months of soul destroying work. Dragging myself out of bed every morning with no real incentive past the desire not to be beaten. Going into work and coming home feeling aweful. But I have finally found a balance. The negative aspects of my work are still present but I have somehow found myself happy again recently. I am not taking my work too seriously(past the life or death decision making). My plan is still to leave this ward as soon as I have reached the one year mark. One years experience is invaluable in nursing and it is the stage at which newly qualified nurses are expected to move on to new areas in order to expand their field of experience.

I have discovered one or two new hobbies. Astronomy being the first. Following several hours in a dark field a month ago with a friend and an expensive camera I suddenly realised how mind blowing some aspects of astronomy can be. With the naked eye you can actually see other galaxies, entire clusters of solar systems with light that has taken hundreds of thousands of years to reach us. Many of the stars visible may be long gone. unc

I have also started working on my family tree with the use of various local records and internet sources. Fortunately I have a fairly uncommon surname ....infact most of the surnames in my family tree range from uncommon to rare. Theres a lot of interesting stuff in there and I have dug up a few photos of my family from many generations back and I have even found a hand written letter, written by my great-great-great-great-grandmother. Between the spelling and the handwriting its taken me nearly a month to decipher it.

I've also managed to find my great-grandfathers world war two RAF dogtags. The trouble is I am still fairly new to this so I cant figure out where I can search for records with just a surname and service number.

In addition to this I've also rediscovered my geeky side. I've spent a week off fixing laptops, PCs and coding in perl. Its been incredibly therapeutic. Although I have to admit one of the laptops is bothering me. I'm still not entirely sure what was wrong with it, or how I managed to fix it.....but its working now. This is a perfect example of how my mind works I am never satisfied with a solution if I dont have a complete understanding of the problem.  

Viney!

I've had a week off and as. Result I have been calm and relaxed. So this morning I've tuned into Jeremy Vine just to experience a healthy amount of rage and frustration. One idiot caller in particular phoned stating that "the NHS is in ruins because all these cheap foreigners are taking english nurses jobs". Tuis made me wince. Its people as ill informed as this that keep the bnp going.

So I thought I'd shoot holes in this statement here.

1. every healthcare professional in the NHS is being paid on a banded system. I am a staff nurse so I am in pay band five. I am on Exactly the same pay as every other staff nurse in the country regardless of race, gender or eye colour.

2. There is no shortage of nursing jobs in this country. Infact both trusts I have worked at have declared crisis because they can't fill all the nursing posts they have.

3. The reason nurses from places like the Philippines appear to get more jobs than english nurses is because the level of training in the philippines is far better than the standard of training here. Most philippino nurses graduate with education and experience that takes an english qualified nurse ten years to catch up with. Also all of the phillipino nurses I've worked with have worked harder than anyone else whilst english trained nurses have spent more time complaining.

This caller really annoyed me and I think its because hers was the voice of the vox populi. Ill informed, ready to blame everyone but herself, but violently prepared to voice her opinion. In some small way I can see a comparison between people like this and a certain German political movement in the 1920/30s.

There we go. Another rant over. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and new year.
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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.