Nursing. Why do we do it, its definitely not for the money.
Nor is it for the long durations of annual we receive haha ( I wish)…
It’s simply to provide a high standard of care to people who need the help.
I expected to be blogging almost every day whilst I was on placement but with all the work I STILL have to do it was impossible, so I went to hide beneath a rock. Placement was interesting to say the least, they always are, the experience you get is irreplaceable.
The things they tell you at uni about your practice placement is just textbook stuff, they want us to think that when we get to placement everything will smell like roses and be so pretty but the reality of it is that you work just as hard as the staff nurses and in some cases harder. It only feels like that because we as students have time on our hands to listen to the patients and spend time with them, a lot of the time all the patient really wants is for someone to look at them as a person and not as a person with all these nursing needs.
On the cardiology ward I experienced many things, which I will not be able to go into with great detail but the experiences that stood out to me mainly associated staff. We as student nurses need to make sure we put our foot down, if you feel a nurse is taking her mentorship to another level, let her know. I worked with a cultured woman from the Caribbean who seemed extremely rude to begin with. When I first met her I thought she was shouting at the patients, being ignorant, blaming the patient but when it came down to it she was just a loud person with a strong accent. It’s so easy to get caught up in first impressions, that we often forget that there is a large variety of cultures out there and just because you are a nurse is doesn’t mean we all act the same. Now, with the positive side of it out the way here is my negative.
Although I made a good situation out of a bad one, I also thought that I was just being nice. It’s not hard to be polite no matter where you are from, to take that extra moment to listen to the patient or to work with them (not against…) As a student nurse, you spend a lot of your time working with a qualified nurse. In my situation the nurse was doing everything in her power to make me do all the odd jobs she didn’t want to, these included bad baths, showers, toileting and bed making. These odd jobs seemed to be her pet hate but I didn’t allow her to treat me like a puppet. This is a skill which has to be developed quickly when on placement so that you can control your own learning requirements, if not, you’ll just be used as extra hands for the day.
T x
Care & Compassion 