Another Day, Another Bad Result

Yea, stupid finals.
I passed the big cancer one! Go me! But I failed the trauma exam.... by 3 marks....on one question. So guess what I'll be doing over the summer holidays. Actually I should put that in inverted commas. This is NOT a summer and there is no way that 2 weeks counts as a holiday. I proper university holiday is like 4 months long..... God I miss those days!
I am way too used to this by now. I can't even muster a vague sadness, I'm just pissed off.
Meh. Back to studying... again.

I *heart* My DS

I'm a gamer at heart .... O.K. I'm a Trekkie too.
Like that is the oddest thing you've ever heard about me. However it took me 6 months to finish Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. If I had played it solid then it would have been less than a month but I took huge breaks when ever I got stuck. So at the weekend I found this case and HAD to have it. (not my photo!) Now it's on to New Super Mario Brothers and My Sims.

Well I'll see my lecturer for the last time next week. 4 shifts to go and I will be on holiday! Finally a break!

Worry Not For I Have Already Messed It Up

Arrgh!
Getting signed off should be this hard. Was told today that she can't sign me off as she hasn't worked with me. Well that's not my fault! I go where I'm told!
Nugh....
On the up side I'll be getting my practice bloods signed off tomorrow. All 10 if the practice that they say we need to be competent. Oh heck no I needed way more than that!

Happy 60th?

The NHS turns 60 today. It's a bitter-sweet birthday with the public drawn between it being old and out of date or still necessary today.
Is it really needing to be put out to pasture? Is the NHS now just a joke?

I don't think it's dead already. Of course it is in no way what it used to be, but then nether is medicine.
When the NHS was started, no-one had considered the heart transplants or intensive care units. Massive hospitals offering neuro surgery in one building and plastic surgery and burns rehab in another.
In the same breath they couldn't have imagined wards full of patients suffering from infections they caught only because they happened in be in hospital with a weakened immune system.

Should we condemn the NHS to die by one of its own creations? No. For where would it leave us? With another bigger problem to solve.

Fly Solo Little Bird

OK.... usually I get called the 'wean' but hey I did fly solo because we ran out of bodies. Woot! I rock.
The results from the exams are out on Friday of next week.

And finally... The world's first pregnant man, Thomas Beatie, gave birth to a little girl. I'm happy for them. I keep quiet on this story because I nearly outed myself when I stepped into an argument about this. So facts? He is a man who was born a woman. Kept his reproductive organs in case he ever wanted to have a child and he did. Good for him and his wife. Now the world needs to back off.

Ass Kicking

Totally got my ass kicked today. By the Stirrer of this placement. They ALL have one, if you haven't found that person that loves to cause trouble then they will appear. Trust me on this.

I've been taking blood for a week now. Of course I had been getting supervised mostly by CSWs (Clinical Support Workers, or Auxiliaries). Most important, the BIG BOSS had approved of this. Then in comes Stirrer, who has been getting on my nerves for the last week or so (please don't come in and take over my clinic and mess up my system and do it all in the space of 10 minutes). She said it needs to be a trained member of staff. Baws, it does NOT need to be a staff nurse. But Stirrer had done her work already and Nice Staff Nurse I was working with had changed the game plan. Gurr.

Eventually I went back to the old system of being watched by whoever was available, besides I'm away at like 20-something bloods now. I can fly solo.... some of the time anyway.

Overtime

OK so I worked like 15 minutes more than I needed too. But I took on someone else's clinic and it took forever to get finished.
I started in the upper GI tract and finished in the lower GI tract. Could be worse this morning I was getting urology confused with neurology. Especially when they are running in rooms beside each other and the patients were coming to us for bloods.
Yesterday was well yesterday. Sufficed to say that it turned a little off when I was talking to a patient's husband. In the last couple of years I've had some hellish things said to me. Aside from shouting, threats, the like, I've been told by a patient that she wanted to die. But the least pleasant to hear was 'I can't lose her, she's all I've got.'
Some days I wonder if I can take it.

Tomorrow...

Tomorrow I have been assigned to perhaps the most annoying clinic. It's important but over subscribed. We're talking double the number of patients than there should be, well I think so. Still Nothing like a bit of hard work and this clinic is defiantly hard work.

Anyone catch the Royal tonight? 'Tis on the net if you want to watch a bit of 1960's NHS. Anyway they've got the top contender for the world's worst student nurse. She faints at the sight of blood. That would make her rather useless surely? Staff don't appreciate fainting students. Trust me it happens more than people like to admit, usually in the theatre week. Nearly happened to me once actually. We had been sent to 'Big Kick Ass' Hospital to witness a heart bypass. I still don't know what happened but I think it had something to do with the masks and a lack of oxygen for me (not the patient). I had to excuse myself because I was seeing black spots. Heart surgery rocks monkeys!

Photo credit and bypass surgery information.

Nothing To Report

I gave myself an asthma attack while I was cleaning today. I don't usually wheeze but I managed it this time. Good thing I still carry my blue inhaler with me.

Other than that..... stuck a few people with butterflies...

Er no not that kind of butterfly.....
Fantastic for people with 'no' veins. I was quite chuffed with some of the patients I managed to get blood out of today.

Lastly.... I'm a little bored of dipping urine. It's not difficult by any means but the most entertaining thing is guessing what will show up before it has had time to develop. And that my friends is just a little sad.

I Vant Your Blood....

Sorry couldn't help myself. I've been taking blood today.
My tourniquet was finally christened! I've been carrying it around in hopes that this day would finally come. Course this new found love for elastic and plastic clips might be short lived.








Infection control would rather we used something a little more like this...The only problem with these disposable tourniquets is that they pull on the skin. I've already had to dress the skin tear on a little old lady because of a doc and his tourniquet, and that wasn't a strip of rubber. See that's the difference. Of course these are being modelled on a cola bottle. You don't see how the rubber one pulls at the skin.

Still till then me and my tourniquet will be coming after your blood!