Righto, so maybe time for a blog update? I’ve been in my ‘new’ job 8 weeks now…and am
still loving it so much! I feel like
I’ve been there years, which can only be a good thing (?) but I also feel like
I have SO much to learn, SO much to read up on and SO much to do! I guess that must be a good thing, as, I
think, a decent nurse can never know everything. Hmm that seems weird, calling myself a
nurse.
Anyway, so in terms of admin things for those starting a
nurse job soon, I’ve got my pass sorted, took a couple of weeks to get I.T. to
let me actually get into my own ward, but I can now! I have my parking pass and of course, from my last blog, I found
my way there! Actually, in terms of
driving, which is what was stressing me out most, a lot of things have
changed…I have a new car! Well, not
‘new’ as in brand new, but new to me. A
beautiful little mini which, to people who know me, know is my most perfect
car…I literally smile every time I get in it.
I love my old car so much, he was my very first car, and he did so
well…he was ‘S’ reg, rusty, one of the back doors wouldn’t open, I couldn’t get
it into 2nd or 4th gear, his MOT ran out at the end of
Sept…it was time to say goodbye, and I’m not ashamed to say I cried! Anyhoo I ramble away…it only took a few days
to get my pass in the internal mail so it was pretty quick!
So…guess I’ll go through how things have been! FIRST DAY…I was scared. Totally, ridiculously, unnecessarily
scared! I was working 3 days that week,
Mon, Thurs and Fri, which is good because after getting literally no sleep from
panicking the night before about the drive there/will people like me/will I
make an idiot out of myself/what else can I do to screw it up…I got about an
hours sleep and so needed a day off to recover after the first day!
I found my way there (yay!), managed to park the car
(reverse parked it too, I’ll have you know) and then found my ward, I got to
the doors and there was a big sign saying ‘Ward # has closed, we have moved to
Ward # at the #### Hospital’. I was
like, seriously? Oh great, trust me to
get a job on a ward where the ward shuts!
So, glancing through the ward door window and seeing it all dark, whilst
fighting back tears I pressed the buzzer, ‘just in case’, and someone
answered! Woo! One of the HCA’s buzzed me in and told me
where to get changed, so I did…into my BLUE UNIFORM! Ahhhh, this is real! I am
(supposed) to be a nurse! I still feel
like someone, somewhere has mixed my name up with someone else, but hey
ho! Surely if I’ve started, they can’t
take my job off me?!
Anyway, turns out that very occasionally the ward closes on
a weekend if there are no patients, or if there is one or two that other wards
can take on, so that explains the sign on the door – trust me to start on a
Monday when the ward had closed. The
whole day flew by. I was introduced to
all the staff, and all seem lovely, but I felt really quiet…probably still in
shock at landing a nurse job, and also partly still feeling like I didn’t
deserve to be working there.
Since starting there I’ve done my trust induction, done some
other courses, spent some time in the pre-admission clinic, been in theatres to
see some operations, and whilst the Sister has encouraged me to see lots of
things, I’ve kinda been wanting to get stuck into being a nurse on the ward, I
mean I’ve waited so long for the chance to do it, so whilst I may look back and
think ‘I wish I’d done this or that’ I was just too excited to be a nurse! I still am, and to be honest, think I always
will be!
I guess there have been two times when I’ve actually felt
like a real nurse. The first being the
first time I counter-signed for a drug, in paeds when you administer drugs you
need to get it double checked by another nurse, and as a student I could draw
up medicines and do the drug calculations but could never sign for it, so the
first time I could was so weird. The
second time I felt like a nurse was after I’d completed my CPR course and had
to go on to pass the paeds version, I was then allowed to bring patients back
to the ward from the theatre. Honestly
the first time I did it, I was paranoid something was going to go wrong like
the child would stop breathing or start bleeding out or something, and I’d need
to jump into action. As time has gone
on I’ve become more relaxed, as in, I can chat away to the child and the
parents, whilst still being able to continually assess the child at the same
time. I know it’s only something
little, but I was chatting to a friend about it, about how if something
happened and I’d need to do CPR, and my friend was like ‘yeah, but you’d have
someone with you, like a doctor, who can do it instead of you’ and I was
telling them that no, it would be down to me.
I think that’s when it hit me the amount of responsibility I’m taking
on, but in a good way, as I feel completely capable of it which is something I
never thought I’d ever be able to say.
Right now I’ve just finished a big stint at work, having
started Saturday morning and finished yesterday (Friday) morning, a mixture of 2
days and 4 nights in a row, which made me feel like I was living at work, but I
really do love it. I’m starting to feel
a bit more like part of the team, I know no team is perfect, and there are
always ups and downs, but I feel on the whole, we’re a good team. I’m really enjoying every part of the job
and it’s going so quick. I still feel
like the new girl but in some ways I don’t.
Very strange feeling!
For now, I will wish you all goodbye and try not to leave it too long til the next blog!
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