Real Live Transplant!

Today I saw a real live transplant, and it was one of my patients from a few placements back, so it was so nice to hear how they were doing and also nice to see them getting what they needed :)

Although it was absolutely amazing to see, something that now I have 2 shifts to go as a student, I probably won't ever get the chance to see again...it didn't excite me as much as I think it normally would have. Don't get me wrong, I loved it, I really appreciate being given the chance to see a transplant and looking back a year ago I would have literally done anything to see one, I think there are two (or possibly three) main reasons why I wasn't as excited about it...so on reflection (!) they are...

1) When I was first a student, I was excited and naive enough to be excited by watching surgery. It makes a lot of the anatomy side of things make sense, and I learn SO much from watching, and I know I've not much more time as a student left and I should enjoy it BUT when I was first a student it was an exciting thing to see but I didn't see the bigger picture. Now I'm getting on in my training I can't help but see the bigger picture. All I can think of is how the patients mam is doing (she donated) how the dad is feeling (he's waiting in the patients cubicle on his own) and how the patient will feel when they comes round. How quickly the patient and their mam will take to recover, how the dad will seperate his time between the two now that they're in different hospitals...all sorts. I feel like I can't see the black and white of things, but keep getting drawn into the grey, HOWEVER I don't think this is a bad thing at all. I feel like it's making me become a real nurse that I care about all aspects of this family.

2) I was with another student who was also in her final year, though not on her management placement, and to be honest, she was the most irritating person I have met in a long while. She thinks nurses are useless and she wants to be a doctor. So why do nursing I hear you ask? Because it makes the post graduate medicine program easier to get on to with clinical experience and also that post grad course is quicker to do (4 years as opposed to 6 or whatever). So what? Why take up the place of a potential nursing student by doing a course you don't like when you could just do into medicine first hand? She wants to do her management in theatres and she proceeded to tell me throughout the (wrong) information during the operation, I didn't say anything, just let her be cos you know what? I want to be a NURSE and I see the patient as a person, not a body. And I'm not ashamed. But this fellow student 'nurse' pretty much ruined things for me today and she made some pretty amazing mistakes when with the family in question, but it's ok, I was just glad to see the patient recover and hear their Mam did ok, then pass on the news to their dad that they was in recovery. THAT to me is real nursing, and though some people might see it as below being a doctor I don't care. It's what I love and I wouldn't change for the world.

3) I'm sad that I'm almost finished my training. I have LOVED every single second and whilst I don't cry, I can see some tears when I finish in two shifts time. It's scary to say goodbye to studentism (made up that word) and say hello to real life nursing. I've had to do an essay on the transition of student to nurse and although it's not handed in, I feel I've done badly because on some days I've mentally pre-made that transition whilst on others I'm still a student with so much more to learn and experience. I think this transition would be made so much easier on the ward I'm on, and that's how I've written the essay as I know I'd be supported so much here. Thing is there are no jobs, well none I can get, so I'm having to get my head around working on another ward and that's pretty scary!

Anyhoo that's an end to a very mixed feelings blog.

6 Shifts Of Being A Student To Go

I've only got 6 shifts...or....two weeks...or...75 hours to go as a student nurse.

It makes me SO sad! I want to stay longer and work more. I still feel like I have SO much more to learn. I love the ward, the kids, the people, the MDT, I love it all. I want to stay here and never ever leave. I wish management placement was a year long. OK, that may be going too far, I couldn't survive another year on student wages, but I still feel like I have so much more to learn, experience and do and this ward is just the absolutely perfect place to do it. I want a job here! I LOVE IT!

Back to reality, there are only 4 things standing between me getting signed off as a 'proper' nurse...PROPER NURSE!

1) Getting competencies signed off, as I've had hardly any signed off this placement, no fault of anyone, just cos it's gone so quickly and we're always busy it's hard to find the time!

2) Passing the essay I just handed in

3) Writing and passing this essay I'm doing at the moment

4) THE FINAL ACTUAL REAL SIGNING OFF

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

So excited yet so scared, worried and still doubtful that I will do all this. I'll either fail an essay or be told I can't be signed off. I won't believe it til I have it on paper.

To add to it, there are...NO....jobs going. Well a couple in A&E of which I've applied for, but as a rule, with two hospitals merging right now, it's not the best time. Still, fingers crossed, something will happen.

But you know what, as for this ward I just love it, I can't imagine not being here, I don't know what I'll do when, in just TWO WEEKS, I don't have to get up early anymore to come to work, don't have to wonder about patients on days off, don't have to work my life around shifts...will seem so strange, and a strange I don't like!

Can't lie in that I'll appreciate having Christmas off for probably the last time ever! But, for this ward, I would actually be ok working Christmas Day, I'd love to see the kids faces in the morning.

Anyway, time for sleep I think, haven't been sleeping well, am worried about having no money after my last bursary in December, applied for all sorts of Christmas jobs to tide me over, but what I really want is a nurse job. A first real nurse job. It probably won't happen on this ward, but even though I love this ward so much, I am willing to work any ward, I JUST WANT TO BE A NURSE!!!