First Bank Shift

"Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one." - Capt. Willard, Apocalypse Now


"Hi, Absentbabinski? Are you still available to work tomorrow?"


It was 8pm on a Friday night and I was just starting on my first drink. I could say no. I could get my drink on and have a lie-in tomorrow. I could also start paying my credit card bill off.


"Sure, what ward?"
"Jeremy Kyle - It's Elderly Care (ah, shit) or there's A+E?"


I've never worked A+E and I'm not cleared to give IV meds at St Clabert's, so I'd end up being an annoying, over-paid HCA. I guess it's eldery care, then.


"I'll take Jeremy Kyle. Long day?"
"Long Day, 0730 start"
"Okay, thanks"


A quick bit of mental arithmetic tells me I'll have to get up a bit before 6am. So time to stop drinking, get my Best Dress together and pack my lunch.


I end up in bed at 10pm (a personal best for me), dreading a ward full of crazy old people and staff who couldn't care less. It's a bit of an open secret that (at least in the NHS) elderly care is staffed with either the most caring, skilled and professional nurses who will always be ready to help or... Well, people who aren't the above.


Cue a night of broken sleep and fear.


When I get on the ward the night staff are smiling. Smiling. They had a busy night but they're friendly and helpful and explain how the ward runs. They point out the changing room and when handover will start. I quickly realise they are the former of the two classes of nurses and I think "I'll be able to do this".


We get handover, I introduce myself to my patients and grab a drugs trolley. I've got two patients with IV Abx, but everyone else is on the usual blood pressure meds, anti-arrythmics and laxatives. I can do this. I only have to argue with browbeat encourage one patient to take their tablets. My patients are by and large lovely. I take waaaay to long to finish my drug round (my motto for the day is "I haven't done this for six months!"). There are only a couple of washes I do because the HCA I'm working with is efficient (more so than I am) and industrious. I get two admissions but they are straight-forward, old people who've fallen down. As per elderly care I have more than my fair share of pooey bottoms but I don't care - in fact on some level I like it. It's one of the bits of nursing I've always loved, helping someone do something that they can't do for themselves. And making the experience as normal and natural as possible. 


The shift was really good. I liked the people I was working with, and to their credit they decided I wasn't that much of a liability and asked if I'd like to come back next time they're down a pair of hands. 


I said "sure".

Drinking from the fire hose of knowledge

So, Medical School.

It's been nearly two weeks since I got my ID card, locker and dissection room coat and I am so happy that I went down this particular trouser leg of time (sorry for borrowing your analogy, Mr Pratchett).

My course graduate-only and consequently it is a broad church; people from all walks of life (I'm not the only nurse!) and with lots of different reasons behind wanting to study medicine. I think for a lot of people it is a personal challenge, which is nice because I think it means they will be very engaged with the course.

The structure is very much oriented to Problem-Based Learning (PBL). We have a session for a few hours on a Monday morning where we are given our case, then we discuss the issues that arise from it and any learning objectives that we think are relevant to the case.

And then we turn on the fire hose.

I have never had such fun leafing through books in a library and learning. My knowledge-base from nursing has given me a bit of a leg up, I suspect, but this is just learning turned up to 11. I have spent every day this week buried in books and journal articles chasing learning objectives arising from the acute abdomen and I love it. And after the intro bumf of last week, it's nice to kick things into high gear and get learning.

Some of it however is covering old ground - a BLS session that I could have done with my eyes closed, even down to calling out "CAN I HAVE SOME HELP PLEASE?!" in a crowded room (something that always makes me feel stupid). But this is to be expected. One of the most exciting bits of the course for me is finding out where my knowledge ends and where the new material I am expected to learn begins.

The hospital my medical school is attached to has its own nursing bank so I have applied to work there, money being unsurprisingly tight and I want to keep my hand in, too. Nursing has given me a lot in terms of supporting knowledge for medical school and I hope it continues to do so for the next few years. As part of the application process I had to take an entrance exam - drug calculations and a scenario-based "answer of best fit" MCQ section. Happily I scored 100% on it, so I guess I've not got that rusty in the past couple of months I've been off work.

Perhaps the most surprising discovery for me is that I think I have found the soundtrack to my independent study - Trance. I am an indie kid at heart and wouldn't have listened to dance music if you paid me previous to this, but trance is the music I can study to surprisingly well. And it means if I get bored in the library I can, quite legitimately, start throwing shapes in the church of dance. Or something.

Hobbyist Nursing

"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in." - Michael Corleone (Godfather III)


"Oh hey, you're back so soon?"
"Wow, guess you just couldn't stay away, huh?"


The 'phone rang at 7 o'clock, the number said "Blocked" and I knew it was the hospital. I'd been umming and ahhhing over booking a couple of shifts with NHS Professionals next week to get a bit of cash and to keep my hand in, but this was a pleasant(ish), surprise. One of my colleagues apologised for waking me and wondered if I could come in. I stared at the ceiling, counted to 3 and said "yes". Time enough to brush my teeth, grab a clean uniform, pack up my lunch and kiss my wife goodbye. She sensibly muttered something about "having fun" and went back to sleep. I ran to the bus.


Coming back to work felt nice. I'd been getting a little misty eye'd about nursing watching Nurse Jackie and it was great to take handover, plan my immediate to-do's and then start the drug round. I really enjoy going through the obs, the drain charts, looking the patient in the eye, saying "Good morning, my name is AbsentBabinski and I'll be looking after you today". Generally they smile back and say good morning and you get a sense of them.


My heaviest patient was a guy who had suffered a stroke intra-operatively and had been left with reduced strength throughout. I helped him with breakfast and it was nice to be doing this for another person, the simple, important stuff. I guess I'd forgotten in the run up to med school how satisfying and intimate this kind of thing is. We chatted as I spooned up porridge and I then I gave him a wash. My lecturers at nursing school had always waxed lyrical about how we were so lucky to be involved in such intimate aspects of care; I had always proposed the notion that they *really* needed to get back on the wards and find out how things worked. I'm not saying that I totally agree with them now, but pulling bank shifts, it feels like a lot of the pressure is gone and I can practice my nursing care in a different way. I feel like I'm doing it as a hobby which means I can take things to a level of detail that perhaps I couldn't when I was ward staff and dealing with the crap that goes with it.


And it was nice to see everyone again, see one of our junior staff take a shift in charge and, frankly, do okay at it. Probably better than my first time in charge!


THIS JUST IN: My med school have *finally* confirmed my place for this year. After so much jumping through hoops and form filling, I got an email from UCAS today saying the uni have confirmed my place, so watch this space!