My roads end

So, as of 13:30 I officially left placement. It was odd. I began the day with finding many people on duty. This was mostly HCA and two staff Nurses working the early shift. I had to wait to find out what team I was working in. It was the bay I was in on Tuesday. There were only 4 patients in the bay and two side rooms to see to. I did the baseline observations and wrote the risk assessments at the same time (there was enough time for this to be done at the same time). There was not a lot to do after making the beds and the morning did seem to drag. Two urgent ECG's were done by yours truly. The visiting SpR was happy with my lead placement and thanked for a "Nice ECG". That was pleasing!

I was searching for an IVAC infusion pump for some of the morning and went two several surrounding departments to source one. It was odd when a Nurse from the ward next door asked when I was finished my training to be able to reply "28 minutes time!". The ward senior sister wrote me a very nice witness statement which I will copy for my upcoming interviews. Next week I have 3 days in the university. Tuesday is the RCN conference, Thursday is a day of information and Friday is a closing lecture and NMC registration day.

My more pressing concern is the fact my Girlfriend last night decided she wanted to try and end our relationship claiming that things "Were not fair" on me and she was "very sorry". I am not sure what to say as this is a blow that I really did not see coming. I know emotions were running high the last few days. Now, not only do I have a job to worry about, I now have this broadside hit to deal with. To say that I have taken this bad is an understatement. I feel sick in the pit of my stomach and I have hardly eaten anything. Come to think of it, I have not eaten much at all this past week. I cannot stop thinking of her, and wonder what it is I ever did wrong to her. Any of the female readers with any ideas of what you would suggest I do please leave a comment. I figure that the best thing will be to give her some space to calm down a bit.

Speaking of the comment and the blog, I realised some time ago that after next week this blog and my ID will be redundant. I do not want to start a new blog yet, so if you have any names for the new blog which I will go on to make, and feel free to leave comment. "Staff Nurse Musings" anyone?

So, if you are a student Nurse, and you are wondering what it is like in the third year, if you are a nurse and were looking for another persons view, or you ever should be a person in the future who was considering Nursing, I hope that my small entries have been both entertaining and useful. I am now at the end of three years. I have passed the course and this time next week will be able to say that I completed my three years of University. I shall be able to put RGN after my name in a few weeks time.

In recognition of that, the video link at the top is the one that finally I choose to accurately reflect the end of the course. I have climbed the mountain of nurse training. Somehow, I have survived.
And to all the people who took the time to read and to post: My profound thanks.

short term loss, long term error

With Student Nurse reading more tales of students being left without a Nursing job on qualifying, he began to think about the future which he has to consider. There are a number of factors which are causing such problems, and you can read plenty of that subject in the media. But Student Nurse began thinking of the future when considering compounded errors. Much how a mistake at the beginning of a long equation will have disastrous consequences on the final figure arrived at, he wonders of the ramifications which today’s losses to the nursing workforce will have. At the moment, a quick scan over the classified in Nursing Standard shows positions vacant for the senior positions for senior Staff Nurses, Sisters/Charge Nurse. This is very nice for the lucky people who can go for such a position. Then the Band 5, D grade jobs...3 possible positions for a Registered General Nurse (RGN).

This is not intended to be a rant on the current status for newly qualified nurses, but a consideration for the future. Consider for a moment the Nursing echelons like a long pipe and the staff water flowing through it. Newly qualified staff come directly from the tap, and the senior posts are the end. As you progress through the ranks, the further you travel along the pipe. However, imagine there was a kink in that pipe. New water cannot flow in as high a quantity as it could. For a while, this only affects a small area, but as the effect of the lack of water kicks in, the greater the systemic loss can be felt. Eventually this will be transmitted to the end, and the flow stopped. If this happens to the extent that there are excessive shortness of newly qualified RGN's, when considering the facts that students face bleak prospects coupled with the prospects of large number of retirements to set in within the upcoming years, and add the extraneous variable of barring foreign recruitment student nurse has reached a very worrying fact: Unless there is a change to the recruitment soon, there will not be enough Nurses to fill the posts and a reduced number of experienced staff.

People need money and will not wait forever to get a job in their field, and newly graduated students will soon look to other fields to work if nursing cannot provide. Few who leave may come back. The college student may also feel the pinch from the cut in training posts, assuming they even choose to apply for nursing and not another course. Some have said to Student Nurse to go abroad. He would like New Zealand or Canada as places to emigrate to, but he reminds them of the one fact companies who advertise for overseas jobs state: 2 years post registration experience essential. Trusts may need their books balancing, but wards still require nurses. Form filling may look nice, but it will not help a patient to know that despite there being no nurses to administer their pain medication, all the forms have been filled in so everything is hunky-dory.

Will this system ever change? Well, consider this: the UK went into Iraq despite unprecedented levels of public opposition to the war. Despite the howls of protest, nurses look set to have a staggered 1.9% pay rise. How much chance will getting a few thousand extra nurses by 2014 have?