My best efforts

Today being a Saturday, there seemed to be a calm washing over the ward. Certainly, there was less of a rush and hustle and bustle as experienced during the week, chiefly due to there being no new admissions. My bay were quiet. I began by doing the medication round, and have to say that I was able to beat my last time of doing the round. It is a documented fact that new Nurse's tend to have medication time's of 40 odd minutes for the medicine round whereas seasoned Nurses have this down to about half that. It does take time (especially rummaging for tablet's in the rather untidy drug cupboard), taking the tablet's to the patient, checking date of birth and asking if the patient has any known allergies (the ward is a stickler for staff doing this, and given the few seconds this takes I suppose is worth it). This resulted in me doing a Dalteparin injection, and taking 25 minutes to do the round. One of my patients is a bit bed bound, so I did a full bed bath, change of gown, sheet's and a shave to have the hygiene needs met and the patient made comfortable to assist with breathing. The risk assessment's were next, and were completed and signed before I tidied the drug cupboard.

The morning soon wore on to a quiet afternoon with the odd nurse call shout to wheel patients on the commode's and a few phone calls to answer taking up most of my time. As there was another nurse who was after a bladder scan but was turning up blanks with a spare scanner from other wards, I phoned up my old placement area and was able to gain the use of one (quite literally as they knew and trusted me). That was a run there and back, and a rummage in the emergency drugs cupboard with a nurse who saw me making my way back (all this really is a drug cupboard with supplies of common drugs which may be needed for patients if pharmacy are shut).

After a few more shout's on the ward to patients, and the medications done twice more, the day drew to a close with me having taken the lead for this day with some quite good results.