Nurse to be

sadly i learned today that the gentleman who made me think so hard those few weeks ago died yesterday. I was involved with his palliative care and by the end i think people had got a better rapport with him. Im quite tempted to got his funeral however its most probably not my place.
I am however thankful to have met him.


in other news i have been looking after someone who had a hypoxic brain injury due to having a massive heart attack which caused his heart to go into a chaotic rhythm and not pump properly anymore. He was quite confused over the first couple of nights and i have to admit i was worried sick about him and especially about what kind of quality of life he would have as he rehabbed. His speach was very slurred, was doubly incontinent kept trying to get out bed despite the fact he wasnt strong enough to stand. However on the last night he had a very lucid moment and the only thing he said to me was "are you from birmingham?" although im not he certainly was in the right ball park.. and well if he can pick up a regional accent from someone he hasnt really had a conversation with, i suddenly realised there was hope after all :-) I never thought id be happy to be called a brummie!

Today i thought about the difference it makes to how we look after people when they get branded as a pain. One guy on our ward, every shift in hand over another nurse would say how he was being difficult etc. i realized on the first shift i looked after him that I was automatically giving him a wide berth, even though i hadn't yet been to speak to him and introduced myself. So i told myself off for being being judgmental and went to talk to him. I found him a bit grumpy but generally once you got him talking he was ok. I wonder how many people had just said 2 words to him and cuz he wasn't immediately friendly decided he would always be a grumpy bugger and not bothered to engage with him anymore, told the next nurse on shift that he was grumpy and he or she had done the same thing.
Making judgements yourself is part of how humans deal with the world, however maybe think how propagating your own (mis)judgements might effect how a person is treated by others. Not everyone can get on brilliantly with everyone else, just because you dont get on with them don't try and prejudice people against them, let them make up their own mind.

Well I have been thorougly shit at updating this... Currently im on placement in a cardiac ward... I have passed all the academic elements of my first year and im just working my consolidation shifts (37hr week no uni) Half way through the 60 shifts i need to do finish the year on target.

Well this week I have been working on the inpatient ward, and although its alot more heavy than the day case unit it is just as busy, but its a different kind of busy. Im finding the the self motivation stuff I had to do in my old computing job coming into play more and more here. It's kind of like, if you want something done you have to make it happen..

anyhow, i worked with a really good mentor today... not to say she was a better nurse from the one I had the other day, but deffo a better teacher and we seemed to get on really well too. It turns out that if i want the chance to work with her again then I have to do i night shift which I thought was worth it as ill get to spend some more time talking to her and Ill have the experience of doing my first hospital night shift.

so now im trying to break my sleep pattern and stay up so i can get some sleep during the day tomorrow. I dont think i should have too many problems with the staying awake thing. Im a geek by default, i function better at night...

someone on my ward died today who I had direct contact with.. If i think too hard about it all I think I would be upset but only because I'm starting to draw parallels with my own situation.
If nothing else its one of those grim milestones that I have to get past with my nursing.. Luckily I seem to be surprising myself with the things which I worried might be a problem for me such as dealing with poo and talking to people who are upset or scared watching people take blood..

i know there are many more hurdles ahead but its good to have a positive start...

my life... its been a long time since i wrote in here...
I thought id start with something that isn't to do with my course directly. I have managed to get onto the Health care assistant(clinical support worker, auxillery nurse or what ever the name is for it this week) bank for the infectious and tropical medicine ward at my local hospital.This is good as its a) experience in a hospital with people b) i get paid for it c) it doesn't really feel like work....
Being an HCA is kinda like being a student nurse but with a few subtle differences.... your responsible for a bit more of the cleaning and restocking side of the ward than the nurses are and you dont do any of the more skilled tasks such as learning to administer drugs. Strangely though you can learn other higher skills such as taking blood and take blood sugar and recording it as an HCA that you cant do as a student nurse, you have to wait till you qualify and then go and do them.
In the main over the past few days I have been getting experience of the more caring side of nursing rather than the technical specialist stuff I have been doing on my placement.
I have been assisting people with washing and going to the loo, grooming and eating... Also doing blood pressure, temperature and o2 saturations.
I have never to this day had days work when i have come home with such a sense of well being and enjoyment as I have had over the last few days. I remember my dad telling me about this one nurse who helped him to have a wash one day, he had been feeling really shite the preceding few days and when i came into visit him he seemed so much brighter. He described how she had washed him and he really felt clean and it had made him feel more awake and human again.
The first lady I ever washed was talking to another patient on wednesday saying about how good the wash i helped her with was, and how she liked it because I was very caring and how she felt like a queen now. I was so worried about how my interactions would come across to another person while helping them with intimate stuff and this gave me confidence in my ability to be human.
One poor lady in her 90's had been suffering with gastroenteritis and wasn't able to tell if she needed to goto loo until it was too late. She was soo worried about keeping on making a mess in the bed that we kept having to clean her up and she started crying as she just felt so helpless. I spent some time talking to her after the nurse had gone and i explained to her that we all understood how she was doing her best and that we weren't angry with her about having to keep cleaning her. I explained that we could only expect her to do her best to warn us which she was doing and that in return for that we would do her best to keep her comfortable and clean. After that she started to seem much brighter especially when i told her how much i though she had improved over the last few days i had worked with her(she felt like she wasn't getting better.

so when people ask me what i did at work and I say "cleaned up 8 lots of diorreah" and "washed old ladies fannies" don't think of it as a rubbish or demeaning job as i have enjoyed it more than the day where i got paid £100 quid an hour to switch on a data projector.

Well I start my first practical placement at 12.30 today...

I thought I'd be nervous, I guess that I am, but only in a "im ready to do this kind of way" I went to vist my ward last thursday, they all seem really sweet and although i didnt meet my mentor everyone was really positive and encouraging etc.

I think I have learned enough from the skills sessions in uni not to be entirely useless, though I have picked up alot from spending so much time in hospital with dad, so I feel totally at home in that environmnet.
Im pretty sure that I will have a moment when i get to work and put on the uniform and step out of the changing room onto the ward. I feel like dad will be with me. Its partly because of him that i decided to train. Im not going to crack up when i put on my watch, my mom and dad got me a nursing watch for my graduation and its dated sept 2007 which coincidently was the month he died in.
I want to take everything I have learned from my dad out onto the ward with me today.

If I can leave today feeling like I have done one thing that scared me, like talking to a patient or relative then I will be happy with myself.

I know that when i walk out there today that I wont be alone, in more ways than one

x

So I was hoping to have posted an awful lot more in my first few weeks of training, but alas, life decided to get in the way as it has the habit of doing.

So far I'm really enjoying it, after the initial freshers week wobble where I ended up in a queue standing next to the worlds most irritating people. I despaired that these people were to be my classmates and peer support for the next three years. One hoped her uniform was a nice pink colour and the other was going to refuse to wear the turquoise uniform trousers cuz she hated the colour. arrgh just fuck off and die..

anyway it seems my prayers have been aswered and either they have die or been chucked off the course or were all midwifery students cuz i havnt seen them since.

Im really enjoying doing the biology type modules, its good cuz the lectures are interesting from the biological point of view and the seminar sessions bring in info on the most common conditions that are presented with each of the organ systems introduced. I was initailly very very nervous about the prospect of going out on placement. Especially seen as alot of the people had lots of healthcare experience.. however each bit of worry on my part is being addressed through the skills lab sessions and Im in a group with some really ace people.

The school and my cohort seems to be really friendly now, and there are a few people who have come from IT backgrounds (all be it nowhere near as techie or geeky as me) so i dont feel like such an weirdo now.

There are quite a few people who are around my age, who have been off and done part of or completed other degree aswell..

so yes its going well..
Im crapping myself about being filmed doing clinical skills practise, mostly cuz i hate the sound of my voice on tape. But Im generally feeling much calmer and much more content with my choice to change career, this was confirmed to me when i went back to my old job to give them a hand with something, as I walked through the door my heart just sank.... I didnt realise how trapped and bored I was there...

so i survived the first day. Not that I had to do particularly much, infact the most exciting bit was consuming 3 cheese sandwiches.

However i have made a good friend who i chatted to all day and spoke to 2 other mature students who restored my faith in my chosen profession after having to queue up next to the most annoying group of twattish girls in the world who kept saying..

"ooh i hope my uniform is pink"
"there is no way im wearing that colour trousers"
"do they weigh you at occupational health because ill have to take my earings and belt off and not eat any lunch"

oh and one girl didnt seem to know the difference between meningitis and hepatitis... which was worrying

at that point i had a total panic on thinking that i had just consigned myself to a career full of people i wanted to drown..

as one of the other mature students point out.. these kind of people hopefully wont survive beyond the xmas exam session and then there will be just the bloody minded and the capable, not sure which of these catagories ill fit into yet..

all the interesting people turned out to be doing mental health nursing, all the young funky looking ones... all the ones like myself who are obviously the people who got picked last in PE at school do Adult nursing.

So tomorrow i have to be stabbed with needles.. and i have to enroll and then got the freshers fair. I got sent on a wild goose chase by being told to go over to the hospital to pick up my security badge only to find that the refused to give it to me cuz i didnt have a library card.. luckily its on my way home, but why assign people to goto there before they have been issued with the required ID.

So, the night before I enroll on my nursing course. I have the paperwork through, I have my funding, I even have my RCN subscription and a spiffy little badge for my uniform...

On Friday it hit me exactly what im doing, that was my last day at my old job. My leaving speech from my colleague included the words "your mad"... After all i have quit working in quite a well paid discipline to do this. However the good news is that all the nurses that I have told think I will be good at it... I have always been quite fearful of change but now im learning that its actually quite exciting..

and lets face it whats the worst that can happen, i hate the course and i give it up... well i have tried and then ill know that its not for me...

i think its going to be tough for me at first, especially on one of my less confident days, i think ill learn to communicate better with people, and generally to calm down... People skills are useful what ever i end up doing either way...

so yeah, wish me luck and all

arrgh