My philospohical way

Well, the second of three shifts down. Today has been a shift made of many parts. I was back in the bay I was in yesterday with my normal staff nurse and another staff nurse who was covering as second nurse. I was going to take the two side rooms which are attached to the area, and the confused patient I had yesterday. In reality I had the side rooms and was floating about the bay. I put this down to there being three of us on the bay which did give a certain amount of "too many cooks" situation arising. However, I really should quell down such thoughts as that's tempting the doves of fate to shit on me from a great height for Friday when I am sure to write on that shift with "I could not find staff for love nor money...".

However, I have had a few thoughts running through my head today. Like for example the efforts that I went to with two patients to give them assisted feeding, the problem of keeping fluid intake up in patients and the odd bedfellows which nurses and doctors make. Take the nurse and doctor relationship. The historic portrait was of the male doctor and the subservient nurse. Today on the ward the nurses and the doctors have quite a close working relationship and one of the wards decision to have the nurses in to give the SHO's (Or whatever they get called after MMC culled them...FY1, ST2, ect) which meant we all have a bit more of a social time together. I particularly find this is one way to understand each other quite well, and certainly I think the doctors find this easier as they can get the nurse they need who is covering their patients quicker. Which I personally find nice as the more we work together the more we both seem to find that while doctors and nurses may be seen as arch enemy's the more I think about it we are more like schoolchildren in love: Mildly having demographic similarity but neither above pulling each others hair every now and again. Think about it for a moment: Both professions can trace their roots back thousands of years, both are the most prominent in the heart and mind of the public, both have handovers, both take the same crap from the public, both have suffered loss of posts in the NHS.

Loosing posts has meant there were few HCA's on the ward today which is why I was in giving assisted feeding to two patients and was trying to encourage a patient to drink which was the biggest failure of the day as despite my best effort I was lucky to get more then a few sips of water into them and if they had more then 150ml oral all day then they were luck (there were several IV infusions though). Which got me thinking of the new(ish) RCN nutrition focus. 2 of the 3 patients today needed me to give them assisted feeding. I could write an long list on nutrition the importance of eating in hospital but it's 22:05 and I really am a bit tired so cant be arsed to do that (if only I could write this in my essays). I think I may have found the biggest hurdle to this: The patient who refuses to eat. I personally hate doing assisted feeding as my early experiences were of spending 3/4 hour battling to give a patient about 4 spoonfuls of food. Today proved no excpetion which is something I really think we need somebody from Mental health to go through more. We have all I am sure been on a ward where there is a confused person who is shouting. You can bet your bottom dollar that this will eventually be one of three things: "Help", "Nurse" or "Get me out". So if they can figure out all this, perhaps they can figure out how we can better deal with the patient who is through their confusion putting themselves on hunger strike by proxy. If they can do that, I can figure out how not to end up with dinner spat down the front of me.