My Finnegans wake

It was with mixed feelings that I was told that the internship placements were put up on the university intranet today. The result is that I am on my second choice, a cardiac surgery ward. Which I absolutely love as the heart is one of my strong fields. However, I am getting too far ahead, so leave me at 4:30 in the central corridor on my break being told this by another student and return to some hours previous when I arrived at 07:10. Today was on the ward, while my mentor was on duty I was allocated to another nurse to act as second nurse. There was one patient who began the day by telling me and the staff nurse to "Fuck off and don't come near me". We left him half an hour and were met with the same reply. As were the junior doctors. The consultant. Two ward hostesses. A physiotherapist. And a visitor. SO there was not a lot we could do. Still I did get the patients medication and observations done and was able to get the bed made and sort them out with getting washed and changed. Just never done it while being swore at before but hey.

I was trying to do the observations with the dynamap again which stopped working near the end but still managed to get my observations done albeit slowly. The day started with the slow fall down to being stagnated trying to square things up, but one I found the sats probe and the dynamap came back to life I was able to make a start on the observations once more. My two side ward patients were both discharged which eased the workload. There was a staff nurse from another department who was with one of my patients when I was covering the lunchtime. I thought it was odd that a visiting nurse would be dealing with the patient in the manner they seemed to be until I was able to deduce this was in fact a visitor and the patient was a relative. I was mildly taken aback with mild panic as I became acutely aware that here was not only a visitor, but one who was also my superior on the job. Thankfully they were very happy, and actually gave me a hand with them. I was able to crack on with the patients who were left. The staff nurse remarked that I had "worked very well" today which was nice (I have never worked in the same bay as the staff nurse in question who originally trained in 1966 and is about to retire!).

The afternoon drifted by slowly and while tiring has left me some time to think. Which is really starting to get to me as I am now comming full circle. The end of the course is comming up and I now look upon this with a mixture of thourghts. The initial one is a feeling of happiness that this whole course of three years is nearly done and this I can rest (I am feeling tired at the moment of the pressure) but also with the uncertianty which all in my positon are facing. Which is even worse for seeing the list, as there are quite afew people on the list from the same hospital as me which will all be fighting for position. And this is simply depressing as there is the rumor running around of the jobs which are going and of those who have been earmarked and the problems which the last cohort faced (60 people qualified but only 8 finding jobs), the future what this holds for me and of my girlfried and how they will fare.

This should be the time to be glad and looking forward to a bright and prosperous future career. However, I am left burt out, dejected, nearly reaching for the fluoxitine, and considering work in a call centre. This is not healthy.