My oddysee

Sunday's are a bit problematic for me to be on the ward on time for shift, as basically there is no connections to the hospital at that time of the morning. Being cold and knackered and having a 2 3/4 mile walk to reach the hospital was only improved by the rather pleasant leafy lanes which I took. There are many thing's which can be considered a quintessential "Englishness", and believe you me, a wooded road in Autumn is one of those things.

Anyway, when I arrived at the hospital and changed, I went onto the ward where there had been only a few starts made to the shift. I began with the medication round, which is one of the large task's which will dominate my life as a staff nurse Again, I was able to improve on the time to do the round, which was more because I was with the same patients again as I was on Saturday. Familiarity never bread indifference. I noted my chest drain patient was better, but also there was no Thoracic care plan in the file. I popped to the ward next door (who handle a higher proportion of these patients) and started them off on one. With all my patients up, we went down the ward and made the beds. I don't know what it s about Sunday's on ward's but there is almost a more social atmosphere about the place. Monday to Friday it's all busy, but there was a definite relaxed feel to the place.

The ease of a Sunday meant that when the co-ordinating Nurse for the day asked us to take our morning breaks, it was decided to go to the cafe and grab something to have rather then whatever we bring in. Nice.

On leaving about 20 minute's later (I love weekends) the patients had just finished tucking into their rather ample breakfasts, and so I got up to dare with the risk assessments. Then we dealt with a chest pain call out, which showed an ECG change. The on call doctor attended the patient, and we set up a GTN infusion. This is worthy of note as a GTN infusion can mean different things to different ward. The area I am in uses the GTN infusion at a rate of 3.8 ml's per hour (about 15mcg per minute) for the treatment of chest pain. However, some area's use this for the management of blood pressure (there are different rate's but 3.8ml tends to be the common one).

It was about this time I recall taking a call from a HCA who worked with us yesterday from next door. I was told that one of my patients who has deafness had a relative calling from abroad. It basically turned out that the only way from them to talk was to use a speaker phone. Despite the searching of the division for one, it seems that one thing we do not have was a phone like that. Thankfully the family brought one in and it was arranged for them to go into the sister's office to take the phone call.
One of my patients were for discharge, so I spend some of the morning doing the discharge paper's and the District Nurse referral's, which took me up to lunchtime. Following lunch, and the 2pm medication round, I went through the competencies with my mentor, which all are nearly passed (there are some which relate to skills which are impossible to pass on the ward at the moment).

During the course of the discussion, we touched on how there had been no patients with confusion or Short Term memory loss, and I had also thought that I had never seen any patients who share the same GP surgery as me. Guess what my new admission for the afternoon had and which GP surgery they were at? Anyway, after that admission, things became very quiet on the ward. Apart from my re-writing of the admission board (which looked very drab) nothng really of note happened untill I went of duty.