Major Incident

Ah. Sunday. A day of rest. A day of roast dinners. Or, If you were part of St John North Yorkshire and Teesside the major incident workshop day. Ah yes. I am now fully certified in knowing how to deal with a major incident and ran through triage. I even did 2 exercises in magaing it. One was a written list of casualties and what triage level I would put them at. Basically, Green is walking woulded. Yellow: Not walking but obs stable. Red is immediate attention (not walking, obs out of range) and white is...erm, how can I put this. Dead. Unlike a normal situation, anyone needing CPR at a mass-cas situation/Major emergency is left for dead. Its not nice. Trouble is, while you would waste time CRP-ing a body, the patient with femoral bleed could be saved. Hard but thats life.

I have provided a tounge-in-cheek take on the day on the diagram. I wrote the original on a scrap of paper.

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.

A symbolic moment

A symbolic moment has just occured. That moment namely is the last time that I have prepared my uniform for duty tomorrow. I have done this for the past 3 years. Mainly because I quickly realised that being blearly eyed at 6am, 4:45am, 5:30am and 5:25am (times respectfully used throughout placement times, bar the community part of 2nd year when I was able to sleep to the late time of 7:30am. Ah, those heady days of 2006 eh?) resulted in me usually forgetting something important. Yup, tomorrow is my last placement shift.

I have had three years which have been... varied I guess. I have had some interesting times. Some good (like my first sucessfull CPR, Passing my Tripartites, the patients who I was able to help, the great Nurses and other people who I had the honour of working with. Most of all has been meeting the one person who, while I today fret over, has helped sometimes keep me on the straight with the course. My dear Girlfriend. There have been the bad. But do you know what? Mostly it was when my niece died last year and when that caused my to referr on a module. I have had bad shifts. I have had arguments with staff. I have had the abusive patients, and on more then once had to deal with a patient trying to very much kick and punch their way out of the ward. Oh well.

Tonight, all however is calm. I know that my girlfriend has her family with her and will be going home tomorrow (hopefully). I have some applications which I hope will be fruitfull, and there are interviews now comming through. A bursary came today. My RCN subscription has been renewed. My NMC PIN number will be here hopefully within the next 5 weeks. Now, for the final time, I will have to think of a succinct title to cover the next shift post. "My roads end" and "My Final destination" are both vying for position. There were other titles that would have been used for mid-course shifts. "My Bad day" for example never was needed for a title should a monumentally bad shift have occured. I have been trying to think of a single tune to embed as a video like for the post. The second place went to "Fall Out Boy" with the track "Thnks fr th mmrs". For what I settled on, call back tomorrow.

So, "what are you doing tonight then Nursing Student?" I hear you ask. Well, going out for a belated Christmas meal with my St John Ambulance division for a start.

My summersault and My emotional day

I have been in for two shifts now. The reason I have not posted until now will be come apparent. On Monday I was back on the ward. I was in an area covering 1 and a half bays. The patients were all light all things considered. There was one patient who required a pressure mattress. Before there was time to even think about this, they became hypotensive. The bed was elevated, and soon their pressure was back to near normal. The bed they were on was jammed. The HCA was having problems getting it back to normal position. I offered to help. When I tried it, the bed was jammed firmly down. However, after one heavy tug, the bed decided to go shooting down, nearly causing me to summersault into it. The bed was soon adjusted and the pressure relieving mattress was fitted. I was not exactly too concerned about the ward though for the day. I am afraid that my mind was more concerned with a patient who was in surgery about that time. The simple reason being, that as it was my girlfriend who was in for her operation, I was worried a lot. That’s putting it mildly! Eventually, after phoning the ward (and giving the attendant long spiel to the nurse about who the patient was, what the admission was for, who I was and to phone me back on the two hospital extension numbers if she did not believe me), I got news she was back from theatre. I asked to have time away from the ward at the start of visiting time, which was granted. I had deliberately missed my breaks to accommodate for this. I will not go into great details here of how she was. I was…shocked really I guess. I know that I see patients every day who are in worse states. The thing is though, as I once remember it being said of a patient: “A patient is a stranger in a bed who, when the time comes to need it, you can distance yourself from”. I simply cannot do that.

Yesterday I cheekily turned up on the hope that they may let visit as 2:30 (I called up near 1pm to ask this). The nurse took one look and said “Just go in now”. I only wish her recovery was better. Somehow, she has come out from the operation with a bad back. My patients were OK, and the nurse knew where I was. The patients were OK, there having been 3 discharges went a long way to helping make that assertion true. I only spent a short time with her. I went back to the ward and got the blood results off. I had cleared all the paperwork near 11am when doing the discharge writing. I then helped a HCA make beds. The staff had remarked I had been very quiet. It was only then, when I really started to talk about things to somebody else that the situation I find myself in now really hammered itself home. I have not found a job as a Nurse, the fact that I was worried about my girlfriend, how I am worried for her recovery, that I wanted to be with her, and most of all suddenly realising ones feelings toward her are more then I imagined, it all became…emotional.

Another Certificate

Above: Heartstart FR2 AEDWoo-hoo! I took my St John AED course today! Passed it, and had a comment which read "Good CPR". I know in the grand scheme of things this is hardly up there with say,ooh, a D.Phill in Astrophysics from Cambridge. However, a) An AED MAY occasionally be of use to me while acting as a St John Ambulance volunteer (I however hope not to have to use it in anger. Lets face it, anyone who wants to use one sounds a bit Macarbe). b) I am well aware more advanced equipment/Professionals are in more the adequate numbers in the world. c) I would be loath to come across as a "quacktitioner". However, firstly, the chain of survival (early access, early CPR, Early defribrillation, Early advanced care), you will note how the AED forms part three.

Most importantly, while it may not be the grandest award out there it is mine. Which I am happy with.

A fitting image...

From here

My football match

I have taken a study week to try and get some time off. I have asked about getting a job in a call centre (so those three years Nurse training look to have gone overboard). I got a letter this morning confirming that I have completed the requirements of the course, pending statutory hours being completed.

Only thing I did was a Football match with St. John Ambulance on Tuesday. I have over the years when with the Red Cross attended calls that are more suited to a "Carry on" film rather then "Casualty". There was one such happening while I was trying to treat a member of the public in the first aid post. I was seeing the patient while being hemmed into the corner by several SJA first aiders who were in their allotted time for a break, and a rather rotund divisional superintendent who was trying to make the tea.

I have started on my latest project for the British Ambulance Society (the details of the history of the local ambulance service) which came in helpful to one of the St John Cadets who is today in Liverpool for a Paramedic interview.