My Aardvark

It was never going to be the best of days when you fail to get to sleep until 03:50 ish and then have to be up again at 05:30. However, this being the weird and wonderful world of Nursing Student that is precisely what happened. Then, when I arrived on the ward, we were casually told that a patient had died. One of my one's I looked after. Then it turned out they had just arrested so somebody bleeped 2222 and the arrest team arrived...who after a few tries at resus confirmed what we had thought that the patient had gone. This was rather sudden as just a few moments beforehand they had been up and talking. I had nothing to do with that call but it was shaping the day up nicely for what was to come.

Then there was the problem of the missing mentor. I had turned up, though the staffing and the placing seemed to be devoid of the mentor. Which is odd as I thought that due to my being off tomorrow for my driving test that it was Thursday I was to take as the away shift. Anyway, I was soon sorted out with a different bay and a small caseload to deal with. One of which was doing all basic nursing care on a patient before taking them down for a scan. After they refused to have a venflon replace by the SHO, we trudged down to radiography with the small venflon in. Well, there was hell to pay down on the department. Which then became the icing on the cake when the patient denied ever refusing having the venflon removed. Either way, one of the radiographers replaced the venfon, the scan was done, and we went back to the ward then I went for lunch.

When I got back, there was a new patient waiting in my bay. From a nursing home, with full dementia, deafness and a whole list of problems with conflicting information. I phoned the home to get the admission assessment details, then spent all the rest of the afternoon watching the patient to stop them getting out of bed which would have made them fall, ripping the catheter out and trying to attend to the other patients as best I could. There were 8 patients. We did get to keep folks happy, but there was the problem. In keeping people happy we were running around at full capacity, and there is no way in hell if that arrest happened this afternoon that we would have coped. So the next time you hear of the cuts in nursing posts not affecting patients care, don't believe it for one second. We tried our best today and were knackered, worn out, and running at full tilt with sod all capacity to deal with anything major or any new patient issues. Which is where the claim stems from. Yes, the cuts may not be affecting the care on the surface, but scratch below that and you will see that it only works because us Nurses are working flat out for our patients. We may be working well like an organised ant colony, but that's through sheer altruism and good will. And that good will can only last for a finite time.