The opposite post of the one below

So, that's my off duty confirmed (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 12 hour day shift starting at 07:30). So I recon that rather then getting tho 06:25 X56, if I get the 06:06 65 that should mean I get in on the 06:37 63 from the crossroads, so I don't end up late.
Right, that's transport sorted out, now for the money for bus fare.
Oh, that's right, what bloody money!
4 days till bursary (and it better damn well arrive), and the bank WONT let me have a extension of the overdraft as they want me to provide evidence of getting a bursary even though a) I set up the account in April of this year when I was a third year, and b) have not had a confirming letter from the student grants unit and c) to get a letter from the university means using up the small bit of cash I have to go in to get the letter printed from the uni. However, I need that for Friday to get in to hand the essays in. Even if I do go in, guess when the overdraft will be confirmed ? Probably bloody Friday when I get the bursary. Best bit is that they want Proof, and apparently "Paying a bursary in and providing a letter confirming the course finishes in 2008 and the letter stating I had not been removed from the university is not proof enough". WTF? That's like asking to prove its Tuesday today but a calendar and today's paper is not proof.
Another way? Another way of causing me trouble more like.

Hello...Hello...Helloh-dear!

Hmmm.
Ah
Oh.
Hi I... Oh, hang on, no, no, thats actually just more bloody Motzart.
Great.
Brilliant!
I mean just...Oh, hello there reader, almost didn't see you there. Hmmm? Me? Aye I'm not too bad, sorry, cant talk long, I am trying to get through to the hosptial to talk to somebody about my next placement except all I am getting is the holding tune. Well, while we are here and I am not doing much let's catch up. I've been slogging it out with the long running saga (or farce) of getting my bursary. It really should not be that difficult to get a cheque but it seems that they have made it so, yes, that's right I STILL HAVE NOT BEEN EFFIN' WELL PAID!. Good news is that the bank are going to get back to me on whether I have a £1600 overdraft limit approved (well i AM a third year and that IS the third year limit so fingers crossed).

I am nearly done with the essays (Yay!) and even better have been told that one of the 4000 word essays that I was to submit on Friday is to be handed in on the 21st August instead (which is nice. If the one I thourght was to be on the 5th is to be in for that date then all is well).
Well, i am going to try the hospitl again so will have to go.

Throwing coal onto the fire of pressure

There was mention of the two essays that has to be done for the theird of August. I was aware of there being two more essays which were to be handed in on the 5th September. Only yesterday I got an email form the module leader of one of the september hand in date modules and was told that they had recieveed email "Regarding the submission of the essay for the 3rd August".

I am not sure if this is one of two things:
1) The original submission date. The module guide never had this in, and we (the group I was in) had to ask. I remeber clearly people saying "5th Septmber the same as the other one".

2) A mistake based on the pathway leaders email casusing confusion.

Fortunatly for me, I had made a small start to the essay, and had written about 750 words of the 4000. After some quick reading and typing on all three, there is 941 words of the 1000 essay (less literature search), 3065 of the first 4000 word essay and now from the urgent writing of the second 4000 word essay, 2385 words. Phew. Now, I need to get offline, and get my laptop down to the PC repair shop as I am writing this to use by using "Safe mode".

Printing with Sir W. Caxton

It's great, I am trying to write 3 essays and my laptop is buggered and it will be £30 to fix it.

The biggest problem is that I have no way of printing to work direct so now have to email my essays every time I make a ruddy change.

Broken Laptop blues

It is bad enough having to write two essays out for the 3rd August. The good news is that I only have another 700 words to write for one, and have all but finished the other bar a quick literature search.

The problem is that I cannot finish the latter and have been making headway with the other. The reson being that my laptop has decided to throw its toys out of the preverbial pram and damage its graphics card. On starting windows, it tells me that file ati2dvag.dll has casued the problem and gone into an infinate loop. I have no idea what file ati2dvag.dll is (appart from Google telling me it's to do with the graphics card), though I am sure it should not be going into an infinate loop. I have now emailed the essays to all my email accounts to retrieve them from a university computer and print them out in the university. I hate having to to that, but the probelm is the only way I can get the laptop to work is to start it in safe mode, which has rendered sound redundant, the USB ports not recognised and the graphics annoyingly big. The biggest pain is that several months ago, the laptop touch pad mouse decided never to work again so I have to use a USB mouse to work the cursor. This, is annoyying. Not nearly annoying howver, as the fact that my bursary saga is STILL ongoing. It seems that while the good people at the NHS student grants unit were contected by the university on the 11th July, they are currently 2 weeks behind and so I estimate it as being wednesday before the application is delt with and a cheque issued. The good news on that front is that it will be both June and July's bursary with will go some way to helping me with the overdraft. The bad news is that it comes too late as with -£1411.00 being the current balace, this has exceeded that limit and my balance for withdrawl is "NIL". Unfortunatly, I am paid by cheque, so the upcomming postal strike may well interfere with the delivery. Yes, the sad answer for me is that when it comes to the bursary, I have a lot of bills jockying for position to be paid like a load of airplanes low on fuel circling around a holiday airport. The one thing which will solve that (bursary) is looking like it will be the last horse to cross the finishing line.

So just when it's a grinding point with the finance, the laptop decides to go funny, and will need a qualified repair technician to have a look (be about £30-£60 I think). I have not the words.

Not good news in the news

Had a quick look at the local paper. This was the leading headline. Its particularly potent as this comes only a week after the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) announced the launch of the "Your not alone campaign"

There is a degree of risk that there will be violence and abuse directed to all nurses, be it physical or verbal abuse. Moreoever, the figures do seem to be getting worse. However, as reynolds comments on his blog, sometimes reports are not made as they are seen as being futile. In this case, there are no known witnessess and no discription so it is likely that once again the culprets will get away with their acts. I have no sympathy for people like that, and hope one day they end up with something horrible (and terminal as well).

In many walks of life, safety measures which have been pointed out are sometimes not acted upon untill there has been a fatality. My fear is that there will be such an event before there is any significant action taken by the Department of Health to combat this.

Insommnia

Hmmm: 01:29 and I am wide awake.

I really do seem to be loosing sleep over these past few months with the course. I am starting to worry about this. I am not really what you call finaincially well off at the moment, what with only having £40 left of the overdraft to access. I need to take £10 out later today so thats £30 to last me till Friday when the bursary arrives (at least I hope it arrives).

Then I have the essays looming over me. I was not like this before, I have no problem with essays, normally get at least a high 50 mark though normally was in the high 60's. The problem is the research essay as I know how much weight this carries and thats a big worry. I am more then prepared to make a dedication to Nursing. I have shown this dedication by keeping on with Nursing despite having numerous occasions where a lesser person may have walked away and not thourght of a second return. I have been threatened with withdrawl following a failed essay (MITS gained) which happend because of a death of a baby (another event), have felt socially isolated in some placements and have been through so very low times, left a job as a deputy manager to a large buisiness (with the attendant high wage). Yet here I still am, plugging away quietly. Too tired to do much work on the essay, yet not tired enough to fall asleep. I am beginning to feel drained by all the extra pressures from outside the course getting piled ontop of the pressure a university course gives.

I was always glad to get out after the 8 week theory block and be on placement. I did say that having a 20 week theory time would be hard...turns out it was wearing more then anything.

Student nurses patent #11765

Been meaning to post this one for a while. I know there are pendant alarms in the community, mainly for warden controlled houses where an elderly person if they fall can summon assistance of the warden. Seen that a few times, had a few shouts on the ambulance to calls like that, and a few similar occurrences on the district.

In the hospital, there are panic alarms. Nurses were to wear them in case they are attacked. Never seen one used in anger, though a faulty one went off so will quickly explain. Say a nurse is in a patient bay, and somebody starts beating seven shades of sh-umthing out of them. If they cannot get out (which in real terms means they could end up getting chased), they press the alarm. This rings a buzzer on a control panel, and an alarm sounds which alerts other staff. When the faulty one went off, there were other nurses from the next ward in really quick.

However, what I have been in and really needed an alarm is patient emergencies. Not cardiac arrests, but other such calls. I have twice been left in a situation where there were no staff about (sods law) for a few seconds and on responding to patient buzzers (on most occasions!) I have ended up having to physically support patients to stop the situation worsening. The problem was with this, that in some I was unable to reach and pull the emergency cord to summon help. The first cases, I had not cancelled the buzzer which originally summoned me, so I recall I left it going to attract attention and called out for help, which a passing HCA heard, and got the staff nurse. The other ones I have been have happened with patients being wheeled. I have known them suddenly go unconscious (though one I am pretty sure was faking it). I remember having to look for the nearest buzzer, press it then dart back to the patient to stop them falling from the chair. There were some where vomiting was a problem, which meant it would be unsafe to tilt them back to support them due to the risk they could aspirate on the vomit. This made time of the essence.

What I needed on both occasions was a way of activating the emergency alarm without reaching a bedside. The thing I really wanted was something like the panic alarm but one which could operate on the same signal as the activation of the ward emergency system (preferable the buzzer). The panic alarm is a security measure and would give an inappropriate response. The illustration above is what I think it could look like, with a flick back cover to avoid accidental pressing.

Now, will that work?

The scare mongers are out to confuse us!

There are many times when I have had shifts which have been...how can I put this delecatly...crap.

For one reason or another, be it a bad tempered nurse, an angry patient, loosing equipment, or any other situation where the manure hits the midden, there are shifts where you just long to see the night shift arrive, or get to leave early, change, get out the hospital and on one or two really bad shifts, find the nearest pint of Guinnes to nurse rather then a patient.

Things go wrong. That is life. It is not the best thing and should be the situation which is avoided as much as possible though to bury heads in the sand and deny that things go wrong is to my eyes more unprofessional then to think ahead and be kept on your toes. So, I was rather alarmed to read this report on nurses taking drugs to "get them through shifts".

I am inclined to be a bit sceptical: the person making the accusations was already in trouble, and why are there no adequate controls made to examine the levels of medication in the hospital already in place. Nurses do have a busy, physically demanding job (save for the lazy ones who are glued behind the station). If this is true, then there are a number of worrying things to have considered at the hospital, and really should be proved at other sites to ensure that this is not happening elsewhere. You cannot be considered competant to nurse patients if you are off your tits on drugs, or wasted on alcohol.

*Apparently the RCN has sent ballot papers to nurses employed in the NHS regarding the taking of strike action. 74% of nurses support strike action according to figures collected by the Royal College of Nursing*

Not much

Have been in and had tutorial regarding essays and have generally been cracking on with work so not much to write about. Blogging not really a priority as you can imagine.

Nursing novices

Have been reading through an interesting nursing book which is for an essay of 4000 words length concerning the use of clinical decision making in nursing using an analytical framework. A situation has to be described and written of. The reading I have done is the context of the junior staff nurse who is newly qualified, they are considered a novice nurse and they do not have the experience of dealing with patients to be able to make any intuition which if considered to be derived from acquired skills.

Clinical decision making is to enable the nurse to decide the best course of action for delivering care and treatment to patients and the best way to do this. The type of method which is used can be defined by using the cognitive continuum theory as defined by Hamm (1998). The theory suggests that thinking is neither purely intuition based nor purely analytical based but is based on a continuum somewhere between the two (Hamm 1998, cited in Thompson and Dowding 2005 p12). According to the cognitive continuum, the main determinants of whether the individual practitioner uses an intuitive or analytical approach will be based on the position of the task on a continuum which is ordered from the most rigid, scientific experiment evidence through to sheer intuitive decision (Thompson and Dowding 2005 p12). In the essay, treatment is the choice of dressing for a pressure ulcer.

However, it just seems so odd to think that while as a first and second year student, we very rarely were in a position to make these assertions but learned much from the study that we did in learning contracts for the placements that along with the competencies as set by the NMC that we never seem to have in the two years ever appreciated the gravity of the choices that we face. After reading and considering my past nursing, it makes me realised that even though we may be novices, that knowledge and interpersonal skills are of the uttermost importance.

Now, I am 3 weeks away from being on a ward (first time since January 2006 mind you), and suddenly feel very apprehensive about all of it. Novice? Crikey yes! Knowledgeable? Well, anatomy and physiology check, nursing code of conduct, check, general nursing theory check, self belief in being able to not become a quivering wreck for the first shift... oh dear.

Found: Nurses fob watch, circa 2005

Back when I first started the university, I was given a fob watch. I quietly managed to loose the watch after first placement and did not resister this until needing at for the second placement.

A friend of mine gave me a spare one which worked for all of a week, then I got myself a new one, then found another one that another family member went and got for themselfs a while back.

I managed through wearing only one watch misplace the others.

Now I have found them all, and have a room which is getting cluttered up with all my old equipment and bits and pieces from the past 2 years placements. The most embarrasing one is finding a photo taken during my first placement: Ahh, simpler times. Its amazing how you can feel a bit nostalgic after only 3 years.

Back in (in more ways then one)

Ah, yes.

We went a bit quiet back there for a bit, did'nt we

The last post was about the "30" mark. Yes, well I was withdrawn on the grounds, though I launched an assessment review and thay concluded that due to my personal circumstances at the time that I would be reterospectivly awarded mitigating circumstances for the module and re admitted.

So, that was a total of 27 days on the dole (well, from the 6th June).

So, what have I learned?
1) Appreciete what I am doing even more (though I love my job even more then ever now)
2) Always have a bit of self beliefe
3) A bit of fear is sometimes a good thing
4) You never write as passonatly as when your entire life rests on it
5) Im nearly £12500 overdrawn (Opps)
6) Boredom results in you making a website (www.freewebs.com/ambulancegallery)
7) That the most progress you can make with administration is in face to face meetings which are far more effective then the computerised/non contact system.
8) Deciding to join the St John Ambulance brigade was a good idea.

So, there we go. 3rd August for 2 essays to go in, and to start on the 6th August on a new placement in infectious diseases.