Things I Wish I Had Known...

Before going into Nursing...

• You will be tired (all the time)
• Your feet will hurt
• You will get constipated (fact of 12 hour shifts, sorry)
• Everyday you will experience that inexplicable feeling of "What the heck are they on about!?"
• It's not easy
• You realise that if you were sick you wouldn't want your friends looking after you

Before Placement...

• It can be considered normal to laugh and cry and get pissed off all in one shift
• You will act like a prairie dog every time an alarm goes off, until you get used to it and become indifferent
• no patient ever goes into a totally flat asystole, it means some twat has disconnected the monitor or leads
• O2 sats crashed? Check probe, face mask/ nasal cannula, O2 supply and monitor connections before panicking!
• No matter how cynical you are, there's always gonna be someone who knows that the system is out the screw you
• There are no good-looking doctors, this ain't Holby City or ER

Lastly...

• It can be the best thing you've ever done
• It can be the hardest thing you've ever done
• It's true, you know; once a nurse, always a nurse
  

Doctors and Nurses: Part 3

Now he's helping me get my own back.....

(At the nurses' station. Doc, male nurse 'K' and myself)
Doc (to K)- I heard you saw a side of WardBunny we've never seen.
(Earlier K had said to me 'Nice pair of jugs' I was however carrying 2 water jugs at the time. He found it so funny because it took me a couple of seconds for me to get what he meant!)
Me- He started it. He said he was going to show me where the pole lived! (A drip stand, not thankfully any part of K's anatomy) (Other nurse J arrives and only catches the last line)
K- Yea I got her with that old chestnut.
Doc- The pole really is an old chestnut.
(All crying with laughter, being holy unprofessional and K has a red face!)

Sorry for all the innuendo and to think I was going to settle for dropping an ice cube down the back of K's scrub top.

I Wanna Be A Staff Nurse

What is better than listening to Nickelback's Rockstar?


Changing the words to meet your own ends!!!!!

I'm through with studyin’ for tests that we’ll never pass
It's like the bottom of the vial and I'm never gonna win
This life hasn't turned out quite the way I want it to be

(Tell me watchya want)

I want a brand new job or an episode of House
And a bathroom that I can relax in
With a king size tub big enough for wine plus me

(Tell me watchya need)

I'll need a credit card that's got no limit
And a big handsome doc or an experienced nurse
Gonna get an STD at thirty-seven thousand feet

(Been there, done that)

I want a new dressing kit full of sterile swabs
My own fob watch and a locker key
Somewhere there must be a job
with money and benefits for me

(So how you gonna do it)

I'm gonna trade this life for bedpans and pain
I'd even cut my nails and change my name

'Cause we all just wanna be big staff nurses
And live in terraced houses driving clapped out cars
The docs come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we have no time to eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest wards
In the ICU with the management
Every good consultant’s gonna wind up there
Every screaming patient with their allergies and well
Hey hey I wanna be a staff nurse
Hey hey I wanna be a staff nurse

I wanna be great like Florence but without the dresses
With no body guards to beat up the assholes
Run a couple IVs so I can eat my meals guilt free

(I'll have the quesadilla, haha)

I'm gonna dress my ass with the latest fashion
Get a front door key to the surgical department
Gonna date a consultant that loves to
Earn some money for me

(So how you gonna do it)

I'm gonna trade this life for bedpans and pain
I'd even cut my nails and change my name

'Cause we all just wanna be big staff nurses
And live in terraced houses driving clapped out cars
The docs come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we have no time to eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest wards
In the ICU with the management
Every good consultant’s gonna wind up there
Every screaming patient with their allergies
And we'll hide out in the treatment rooms
With the latest Nursing standard and today's NT
They'll get you a pay cut with that evil smile
Everybody's got a Pharmacist on speed dial
Hey hey I wanna be a staff nurse

I'm gonna take ma place on the register
Gonna pop their pills from a pez dispenser

I'll get tired out students writing all my notes
Check ‘em every night so they don't get 'em wrong

'Cause we all just wanna be big staff nurses
And live in terraced houses driving clapped out cars
The docs come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we have no time to eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest wards
In the ICU with the management
Every good consultant’s gonna wind up there
Every screaming patient with their allergies
And we'll hide out in the treatment rooms
With the latest Nursing standard and today's NT
They'll get you a pay cut with that evil smile
Everybody's got a Pharmacist on speed dial
Hey hey I wanna be a staff nurse
Hey hey I wanna be a staff nurse

P.S. The changes to the words are mine but the song and original lyrics are not!

Doctors and Nurses: Part 2

So we've established that our little doctor has a sense of humour. Certainly he displayed more of it when we were coming back from transferring a patient awhile ago. After returning to the ambulance, in the freezing cold, we pulled the blankets off the trolley wrapped them around ourselves to warm up. When doc pipes up and asks "Take me back to my refugee camp via Safeway!" (I have to wonder when he last had to go food shopping as Safeway was bought out by Morrissons a couple of years ago) The paramedics just looked at us and asked if we wanted dropping off a phyc unit instead of ITU. This however is the episode where we discover that he also has a heart.
Another patient had died, we were expecting it. He had been starved of oxygen for 10min during an MI and his brain had become seriously impaired. He almost died in my arms as he was being rolled. I've never had to do last offices before, although I have handled the paperwork for patient's who have passed away.
I cracked at the point when the nurse I was working with closed the zip on the body bag and said to the patient "Night night, Sweet dreams." I was out of the unit as fast as I could without drawing attention to myself... When I finally made it back he actually asked me if I was OK.... aww.

Doctors and Nurses

Patient had a peri-arrest post op and was to be with us for the foreseeable. She was currently on the highest level of CPAP we offer, next step intubation. O2 sats were improving but the blood gasses were not compatible with life so to speak.
"Set up for intubation and I'll go draw up the drugs." says the Doc (ST2, think that's the new equivalent of JHO, but don't ask me it's complicated enough) and he ambles away to the treatment room.
Half an hour later, patient's still in the same condition (there's not all that much we can do right now)...
"I'm gonna go have a think about this on the toilet."
As he walks off I've got my mouth hanging open, "That's it I'm going to med school. I want to be able to do all my thinking on the toilet!" Luckily the ward sister saw the funny side.
I went off shift about an hour later and even the consultant was thinking that maybe they shouldn't go through with it.
Next morning she was off CPAP and on 100% through a face mask with all her sats stable! She never did get intubated and the toilet has been crowned ward thinking spot.

Allergies

Once upon a time I was on a surgical ward and as part of the stuff I HAD to do (cos no-one else wants to do it) was the pre-op check lists. This damn form is rather generic, GI and the ortho-pods all use the same one for example.

Anyway we ALWAYS had to ask if the patient had any allergies. I would hope that it is one of those DUH questions. The point I'm trying to get to is I've had some ruddy stupid answers. I'm quite happy to hear "Oh penicillin, nurse" or "Aspirin" or "Eggs", more often I get....
"Celtic" - ruddy Rangers supporters..... I support neither by the way
"Rangers" - ruddy Celtic supporters..... Tell you what it's a bad idea to put 2 die hard fans in the same room, you might as well pull the pin out of the grenade and let it fly
"Ugly birds" - I hope he doesn't mean me (like I care) - usually they are the least attractive people on the ward
"Blackcurrants" - yea cos they are always sneaking in to the drugs we use (still had a red wristband and it was on the form though)
"Gay men" - I kid you not.... actually this is discrimination but I'm not going to let that get between me and my internalised anger.

All those answers came from men. Still some of them don't try to be stupid and some of them you can have a laugh with when you get to the "Are you pregnant?" portion of the form.

I did once hear a nurse rattle through the questions "Do you have: hypertension, angina, COPD, asthma, etc..." to which the patients usually answer loads of no's then stick "Are we the ugliest people you've ever met?" usually this stops then in their tracks and makes them think. By the time they get it they think they've offended us. Makes me laugh anyway.

WardBunny News Network

It's been awhile, mostly because the night shift really did mess with my brain. So this is a round up of some bizarre news stories that have been coming through my feed reader this week.
First up the some what badly understood study on what the staff think of the NHS. The BBC have billed it 'Care not top priority - NHS staff'.
This does not mean that the nurses, doctors and everyone else doesn't care about you as a patient but instead that the care of patients does not seem to be the top priority for the upper echelons of Trust management. Well it's not money is and to be honest probably always has been.
Then that have been more studies into the drop out rates of student nurses. The best quote of that article has to be 'morale among student nurses was at rock bottom'. Well the course ain't exactly a walk through marshmallow land with a unicorn. More like wading through a waste treatment plant in the dark, backwards.
In more depressing news (if it can get worse than that) Tekkamaki died last night. Kappamaki is still fit and healthy, and has a new tank mate. 'New Guy' is still nameless but has taken to sniffing poor Kappamaki's behind.
And finally - Lecturer Writes Cook Book. Yea anatomy cook book, lets just hope he doesn't teach human anatomy or else the next headline will be 'Lecturer Arrested For Promoting Mass Cannibalism, Students Protest'.

Quote of the Night-shift

Mentor - "This is the sickest patient in the hospital."
Me - "And you're leaving her with the student.... great."

O.K. I'm not yet confident enough to look after an unstable ITU patient by myself. Even for an hour.
Thankfully nothing happened and someone else watched over my shoulder. Better still her condition improved (not due to my interventions though).

April Fools

I couldn't think of a good one today... but the BBC managed to top anything I could have tried.
Flying Penguins!!! (Screen cap from the BBC. I doff my cap to you good sirs. Please have my licence fee for this alone!)
Then reason I enjoyed it so much was not because by the time I saw the ad the internet had ruined the surprise but because I needed a change of trousers after seeing my flatmates' faces.
There I am trying to control the TV long enough to see the 6 o'clock news (Hollyoaks is on at the same time and no I don't consider that mind expanding) when on comes the BBC's best ever advert (if you haven't seen it go look up iPlayer NOW!).
So I'm laughing at the flying penguins and I look around, there are blank faces staring at me. So much for that don't believe everything you see on TV. I had to say that it was a joke because penguins can't fly which started an argument as to why penguins have wings. To swim with was my answer. (Close enough for jazz.) Still they think I'm nuts for finding it funny and I think they are nuts for falling for a April Fools joke.

Jokes are not half as funny when you have to explain them. It's even worse when no one believes you.

Pensionbook

Now what did I say about growing older?
Heads up to Suman @ The Amateur Transplants