OneNursesBlog.com

It’s been a while (!) but after almost eight months of not blogging about nursing, I was finally inspired to put finger to keyboard and write about an experience I had a few weeks ago.

I’m still working on the intensive care unit, and I still enjoy it (barring the endless night shifts of course!) but was starting to feel a bit isolated in my work.  I’m not the new nurse anymore, infact there have been several new nurses started since I did, and so I am very much left to my own devices in my work.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that, and am pleased that I am trusted to be left alone with even the most poorly of patients, but every now and then you need to feel supported.

That was the exact feeling I got the other week.

My patient had been extubated (his ‘breathing tube’ had been removed) 48 hours previously, and I had been working with him for the previous three night shifts (they never end!)  His first night without his ET (endo tracheal) tube went well.  He still had a lot of secretions on his chest, but he was young and he was coughing them out well.

His second day hadn’t gone so well, and he was very tired, and not coughing (other than to spit at people) and when I listened to his chest he sounded as though he was drowning.  I informed the doctors of this, who said to “encourage deep breathing and coughing” - this was at 8:15pm.

Come 2:30am there was no improvement and we had made the decision to re-intubate.  A decision which would have been so much easier to realise at 8:15pm!  However, as the patient began to fight against myself and the junior Registrar who had taken the task on, my colleagues showed me just how supported I really am.

Not one, but three other nurses from around the unit appeared to assist with the intubation, and the situation was managed as well as if it had been the middle of the day, and not the middle of the night.  By 3:30am my patient was ventilated and after seemingly endless suction (of the secretions on his chest, mechanically) he no longer sounded as though he was drowning.  My colleagues returned to their patients and my faith was restored in all those I work with.

For the past four and a half years, I have worked (I am including my nurse training in this!) in what has been pretty much the same speciality of nursing, and in the same trust, using the same documentation, working with the same type of patient, with the same kinds of illness.  I had found myself a nice little comfort zone and I was wrapped up in the middle of it.

Last week, to prepare me for my new role as an intensive care nurse, I stepped out of it.  Well, fell out of it might be a better way of putting things!

Not only was I off to a new trust, I was off to nurse on a ward whose speciality I didn’t really feel 100% comfortable with.  This was going to be fun!

I was met with a friendly face,  a girl I had trained with who had been on the early and was handing over to me, which was a nice start.  I was also presented with two first year student nurses who would be working with me, and asking lots of questions!

I took handover of the 11 patients in my group (I had an empty bed!) and began introducing myself to them, asking if there was anything I could do to get our day together off to a good start.  It was then that I realised just how much I had enjoyed my comfort zone.  On my previous ward, if we had a patient requiring a syringe driver, or other palliative care, we were able to devote almost our whole time to them, as we had other nursing staff to back us up in the team.  Today, I was on my own (as a qualified nurse at least) with three such patients.

Fortunately, the student nurses I was working alongside had worked on this ward for a few weeks and knew the routine, and the patients, and were able to point me in the right direction when I was taking urinals to the steri-room instead of the sluice, and also able to use their initiative and do a lot of the tasks that would have otherwise slowed me down.  A set of obs for 11 patients is the perfect way to help out a staff nurse!

With their help though, we got through the shift, and so did the patients.  We managed to ensure they were all fed, watered, pain free, and content when we left, and I am able to take a sense of pride that I am able to step out of my comfort zone and take on new challenges.  I wish I’d done it ages ago!

A bank shift on a ward you are not used to may not appeal to you most of the time when you’re happy to make the most of your days off from your own ward, but it does give a sense of satisfaction, and it keeps you on your toes!

First of all, let me apologise for this, it may turn into a bit of a rant!

Induction days are quite possibly the most pointless of pointless excercises in playing the game.  We have to go through them in order to get a job within an NHS trust, and the trust have to give them in order to be able to avoid lawsuits with the “well we provide education…” line.

Today, I experienced talks in fire safety - not specific to the workplace I will soon be working in, you understand, but just in general.  I am a long way the wrong side of 25 and have been employed within the NHS before.  Surely it is enough to assume that as I have completed a course of higher education and have already endured such a talk, and judging by my lack of scorch marks, have survived until now.   Even one slide about the workplace I will be let loose upon would have justified today’s worthless episode, but that was far too much to expect.

A talk on the spiritual care team followed.  Well, a sermen from a priest who just welcomed the chance to preach at an audience without drips attached on what a wonderful job we nurses do, followed by the obligatory slide with “You can contact a minister via switch at any time” on it.  He didn’t even give us his bleep number.

Tomorrow sees a manual handling lecture.  To a room full of experienced nurses, most of which don’t walk with a limp or with hunched backs.  I can’t wait!

Well, it’s always awkward writing the first post of a blog, especially asI’ve just written everything I wanted to in the “About” page!

So, I guess the only thing I can say is to go and look in the “About” page to see what the blog is all about, but if you can’t be bothered, then a quick summary would be to say that I started this blog to share my experiences as a nurse with the world.  I have experienced just about every emotion there is as a stafff nurse and I felt it was time to let them all out!

I work in the UK, so all you US nurses may not get what I’m talking about from time to time, but bear with it!