OINK!

My 2 favourite things right now are:

1. Telling people I'm signed off
   and
2. Making fun of Swine Flu

Yea I know number 2 isn't very grown up but to be honest it is Scotland's biggest joke right now.
It's kinda coming to a big nothing. The two people who were the UK's first cases have sold their stories to the newspapers. And the government has produced the most patronising leaflet since the one about disaster preparedness.

The jokes are doing the rounds as well.... We have the one about breaking out in 'rashers'. Of course you can insert almost any 'oink'ment joke as appropriate. Oh and my current personal favourite has to be any poor sod with hay fever, a cold or an asthmatic/COPD/smokers' cough being let loose on a bus or train. Fastest way to get the annoying person sitting beside you to move.

Worst part is I could have saved them millions on the whole message thing. You know; wash your hands, use a tissue, bin the tissue............
We had a strangely similar message going about nearly 70 years ago.......

Pond Crossing Differences

I'm looking for a little input here.
The last post showed that nursing in UK isn't really the same as nursing in the USA, although it's the same job. The training isn't.

So to clarify a couple of things....
In the UK we don't sit a board exam at the end of the course (like the NCLEX) before we are placed on the register.

We do have to renew our registration every year to continue being a registered nurse and able to work.

I can be in charge of as many as 12 patients (in this current placement) (with a nurse shadowing me) per shift. These are general surgical patients (or even the rehab patients from my last placement) and not those requiring high levels of care (2 patients to 1 nurse) or ITU care (1 patient to 1 nurse).

Our courses are specific to the area we will be employed in. Cellar Door will be a mental health nurse and is on the mental health branch training (you don't mind being an example do you?). I will (someday) be an adult / general nurse and am on the adult branch. There are also separate branches for paediatrics and learning disability nursing. Midwifery is a separate course altogether.

The majority of nurses in the country are employed by the NHS. Only 25 to 30% are employed by the private sector.

Anyone see any more differences?

The Stethoscope Tag

I was tagged by both Little D, S.N. and Undergrad RN for this one.

Here are the rules:

1) Post a picture of your stethoscope

2) Tell what you love about it
3) Tell what you hate about it
4) Tell me what your dream stethoscope would be
5) Does it have a name?
6) Tag all your nursing friends (Including the one that tagged you) and don't forget to leave a comment on their blog telling them that you tagged them!

So they are both about to have a WTF moment.

We don't have stethoscopes as nurses or student nurses over here. Actually that's a little inaccurate. We do HAVE them. We just don't use them so prolifically.

From what I can tell Student Nurses / RNs across the pond (like we do just not as often) use them for measuring BPs and listening to lung sounds and heart rates. We don't commonly take manual Blood Pressure measurements. For some patients we have to but mostly we use digital machines like Dinamaps. OK mine doesn't have a thermometer on the side but it's just the same thing.

I have done manual BPs but not in a long time. When you have say 12 patients under your care and you need obs on all of them it's not really enough time to do manual BPs.

As for listening to hearts? I've done that. I've heard the sounds of mechanical heart valves. But again we don't do any of this routinely.

Lung sounds? Only in my ITU placement so far and really only then because of the risk of Ventilator Acquired Pneumonia. So there you were checking for air entry into the lungs at the top and bottom and any other noises like crepitus.

If you're looking for a stethoscope on the average ward around here you better start by finding the crash trolley. There'll usually be one hanging off of that.

I remember working the neonatal clinic in an outpatient's department as agency one day when I walked into the consulting room and the docs stethoscope was lying on the desk. He caught me staring at it and I said "That's a tiny stethoscope."
"It's for tiny patients." He replied. See because I'm working with adults most of the day it's easy to forget that we start of as little human beings, who need equally little equipment.

Sorry guys I don't have my own stethoscope. I have a pen torch for doing neuro obs and measuring tape for sizing TED stockings if they count as specialist equipment.

I have no-one to tag I guess. Unless of course Cellar Door has a stethoscope moment she would like to contribute?

Confessions of a Nurse

Anyone in the UK catch the Dispatches documentary - Confessions of a Nurse?
Please tell me you did. Much of it is true, least from what I heard from around the web and throughout my course.
Disturbing.

Patient care

• 42 per cent of nurses and midwives interviewed say they have either been in or witnessed situations where patients have been put in unnecessary danger
• Over half (57 per cent) of the A&E nurses interviewed say they have witnessed situations where patents lives have been put in unnecessary danger
• Almost half (53 per cent) say they have seen colleagues perform medical tasks that they are not qualified to do
• 44 per cent of the nurses and midwives we polled say they don’t always stick to the rules
• Over a third (37 per cent) think that patient care in the NHS has become worse in the past five years

Impact of understaffing and long hours

• Half (51 per cent) of all the nurses and midwives interviewed say that they are exhausted most of the time
• 29 per cent say long hours and exhaustion prevent them from doing their jobs properly
• 83 per cent of the midwives surveyed say they have been in situations where they have had too many patients to look after properly
• 70 per cent say understaffing prevents them from doing their jobs properly
• One third (33 per cent) say they would leave nursing and midwifery if they could

Behaviour of nurses

• 43 per cent say they have seen other nurses shout at patients (13 per cent admit they have themselves shouted at patients)
• 44 per cent of nurses and midwives interviewed admit to calling in sick when not really ill
• 40 per cent admit to browsing the internet when they should be working
• 36 per cent admit to coming to work with a hangover and unable to concentrate on the job properly

We can't care properly for our patients if we are under staffed. There are no great revelations to be had there. Not for those in the NHS anyway.
Bet you the patients will be scared now.
Go watch it on 4od if you can....

Yesterday Was Far Better

Never had a day like it... Being told that I'll pass if I keep doing my job that way I am! SCORE!

I love my placement. Placement is now past the halfway point and it flies past. Course working only 3 days out of 7 does make it feel like that. I also feel rather lazy. The eagle eyed might have noticed that I've not done a whole lot of swimming recently. Yea I need to get out more on that front. It might have something to do with the minor factor that I got a monthly pass so the motivation has gone out of it. You know what I mean. All those gym memberships that run for a year but only see a single month of visits.

Anyway I have a range of news stories that have filtered past the news feeds in recent days.

The paramedic who was attacked by yobs throwing fireworks while the woman, who was suffering a heart attack, lay dying. What is the obsession with attacking the emergency services? I really don't get it.

There's an inquest currently happening into the deaths of 10 elderly patients at a single hospital. What got me was the recollection of one patient's son who was told that his mother was there to die. that not the kindest way of breaking something. Even worse he believed that she was there to rehab after a stroke. So why is a woman in rehab dying? Who really knows. However all 10 patients were under the care of the same doctor; who is now under suspicion for over prescribing sedation.

Lastly there was a study done on wither religion makes a difference on patients wanting resuscitation at the end of life. Can't really comment on this personally because I've not really seen it happen first hand. I know for a fact that families have a huge part to play in the resus status of patients. Maybe they should and maybe they shouldn't. Who really knows? A lot of the fight comes from the person themselves and their inner strength. So does that imply that those who are not as religious have less inner strength? Is this evidence to back up some of the claims that religious speakers make?

And in the culture section of today's news announcement I need to get my ass over to Edinburgh. A Turner exhibition starts next week! A selection of his Italian works and his paint box and pallet. Hows cool is that?

Right I'm off to enjoy what may be the best weather Scotland will see all year!

LGBT Staff and Patients

So how many open LGBT staff do you know? How many patients are open about themselves? How many have introduced their partner?

A new report released by the University of Leeds about LGBT issues and support. A quick breakdown of the students and staff they asked showed that universities are not as open as they seem. Especially for staff. Actually, today on a similar thread CB was talking about lecturers not being open and accepting of students with mental health issues.

So why are universities, where you would think that you could be any person you wanted to be, are so closed off to the most vulnerable of students?

My last uni had a large supportive network for their LGBT students. The current one has nothing on this campus. Well nothing visible. The flip side of this is that old uni had no obvious provision for students requiring special help. Most of the learning disabled students seemed to get their provision direct from the school they studied within. Current uni has on-site counsellor and dedicated department for special needs students.

There is no standard. Aside from discrimination policies. And we've all seen how well that worked for me.

But back to relating this to health care.... How many Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual staff do you work with? How many are out?

The NHS is still institutionally homophobic. Only 2 NHS trusts made it onto the Stonewall top 100 this year. That's pretty poor considering the numbers of police squads and councils. The BBC reported that there is an extremely low level of screenings done on Lesbians for cervical cancer. Once upon a time I was told that I didn't need one... cos you're gay, you don't sleep with men (That by the way is total BS). Time to change that! It shouldn't be this way but perhaps it's not at the top where the problems lie.

While you are thinking about the staff, how many have made openly homophobic comments? How many have referred to something as 'gay'?

Is this were our problems lie? I think so. Let's take my last placement as an example. At the top the Sister and one of the Deputies knew and were supportive. 2 nurses and a CSW knew and didn't bat an eyelid. But there were at least 4 homophobic comments in my presence (none directed at me but I try to keep a low profile). How can LGBT staff feel comfortable about themselves when they know they can't really talk about it?
Don't give me that "you don't have to talk about yourself like that" nonsense. I sat through a break where 3 people talked constantly about their up coming weddings. How would they have taken it if I had talked about a civil partnership? (Not that I have anything to talk about in that respect though.)

There 15 mins of thinking and I found the root of the problem. People.

Bugger can't fix that by myself.

Being Green / Being Mean (the toilet talk)

This is an odd balance...
I can be really stingy. Have to be; my money's running out and with this supposed placement over my head I'm not taking as many agency shifts as I could because I really don't know what I'm doing next week. (Honest he's not given me a placement yet and agency needs at least some advance warning.)
This brought me to an interesting thought do you have to compromise on being green so you can be mean instead? There's a toilet paper advert running that states for every tree they use, they will plant three new ones. We don't use this brand in the flat. We use the cheep as chips, supermarket value brand. This costs about £1 for 12 rolls. The brand planting all the trees costs £2 for 4 rolls. Does a cheep roll wipe less asses than the expensive one? I'm not going to test that sorry. But lets make the scientific assumption that the expensive one is slightly longer and more absorbent. You seem at least to get far more for your money with the cheaper rolls.
(I promise you I'm not obsessed with toilet rolls. Bin bags and washing up liquid are far more obsessional.)
I think I'm starting to see where their money for saplings might be coming from.
So back to the question do we have to choose being green over being mean? I'm sure you are aware that greener / fairtrade / healthy products cost more. They do fairtrade coffee has always cost far more than even Gold Blend (and that's not cheap either). People wonder why the west of Scotland has a crappy health record (our 3 biggest killers are heart disease, stroke and cancer). All unhealthy food is cheaper in the supermarkets than the healthy stuff!

Another point I'll make before leaving. How much waste does your hospital produce in a day? The average (read small-ish) operation produced at least 3 large bags of clinical waste. That's 1 small operation. There could be 10 of those per day per theatre. The wards aren't short of stuffed bin bags either. The least green industry in the UK has to be healthcare. A lecturer once said that 'I'm here to do my job. Not save the NHS money.' She meant that if we had to use expensive dressings, or open 15 packets of something to make sure it was right then we did it. But look at the waste we generate. Sterile packages for surgery are double wrapped and 90% of patient contact materials are all disposable. I'm not for a minute suggesting that we abandon disposable gloves, aprons, sterile packaging and our beloved paper-pulp products. Abandoning these would send infection control into meltdown! There is little or no way to cut down the waste created by the healthcare industry. We have to toe the best policy guidelines and it is never in the patient's best interests to cut corners. So other suggestions? Recycling? Er lets not go there shall we?

So is it a valid choice? Yes lets all save the planet but not when I'm on a budget. People should do what they can. We need to recycle more. We need to cut down on packaging (although maybe not in healthcare). Maybe that's where I could be better since I cannot afford the 'green' bog roll to do it for me.

Quote From A Shift Somewhere

I'm too tired to remember where or when I heard this but......

Nurse: I wonder about those nurses who say they've never cried about a patient...
Nurse 2: Everyone's become attached at one point or another.

They have a point. People get attached. I've gotten attached.


...but what about those nurses who never get attached?

Struck Off for Being Religious?

OK we have a nurse who is religious. That's just fine the writer of this piece is a nurse who is gay. You can be what ever you want to be. I don't plan on getting struck of for my sexuality any time soon. That alone shouldn't be a problem, equality and diversity and all that.
Course it's not that simple. She has offered to pray for her patient (The Beeb's report cos it might be more impartial). The patient questioned her actions (which she has a right to do) and of course it has been taken further.
I'm in 2 minds over this because on one hand we have a caring nurse and spirituality is part of the activities of living. On the other we have a clear breach of the Code of conduct.
They've got her over a barrel, so to speak, on 2 points.
"You must demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity" - We care for so many different people that really you shouldn't even make assumptions about them.
"You must not use your professional status to promote causes that are not related to health" - Now here she was promoting something unrelated to health.
That's 2 strikes.... and for anyone trying to string up the sister that had to escalate the situation -
"You must listen to the people in your care and respond to their concerns and preferences"

The Code is what we live our lives by. You break it, you pay the consequences. I understand why the PCT have had to take action. Maybe I realise better than some how pushing my beliefs on anyone else could hurt.

Oddly enough I love the anonymity of the professional façade. I love that I can put away the bits of my life that aren't necessary for me to do my job. But that's the part so many people have a problem with.

EDIT: Updated 08/02/2009.
The PCT have lifted the suspension and allowed her back to work. I don't think this will be the end of it and we'll see the out come from the MNC hearing in the months to come.

Stand Back I Saw This on Casualty!

Imagine the scene....
You're walking through the local shopping centre when a middle aged man in true theatrical fashion clutches at his chest and falls to the ground. His skin is pale and clammy. His lips are turning blue. All fingers are pointing to something delightful involving his heart. His wife is screaming and bystanders are throwing their 2 cents into the ring when someone comes forward...

At this point I'd be thinking thank goodness someone in that crowd as done CPR at some point. Er no... this helpful person is going to be helping this poor ill man on the basis of knowledge acquired from medical dramas.
Sorry I've done more CPR courses than I care to count and I would still be hesitant (slightly) in rushing in to help. But apparently 1 in 5 would have a go even if they are not trained. 77% aren't.
"First aid is easy if you know what to do" Well thanks St Johns Ambulance. They think you should at least try even if you haven't a scooby. Now if this was another country I could mention that bystander could get sued for not knowing what they're doing. Heck it's happening here too. It's a false confidence that could actually put someone's life at greater risk.

"Stand back I was this on Holby City / Casualty / ER / M*A*S*H / House / Crossing Jordan / Gray's Anatomy / other medical drama!" Ain't really gonna cut the mustard. Keep your precordial thumps to yourself. Assuming you know what that is...

A List Of DO NOTs For Nurses

Do Not....

Go to work after only and hour and a half's sleep
Hit on the doctor
Stick the 'finger' up at your boss
Think cheek towards co-workers is a form of communication
Turn up late then disappear to a clinic appointment with a patient
Accuse the consultant of being sexist because he comments on 'women drivers'
Make jokes about impacted bowels
Agree with anything you don't understand
Hit on the doctor (oops said that already... well it needs to be said)
Try to work without some form of caffeine in your system

WTF?

OK well we have a 3 year old with a smoking habit and his mother dragged up in front of court. The kid was filmed by his mother's friend because she was worried about him. Apparently the film clip shows him lighting a butt with a lighter and inhaling. Now come on if that was a kid showing off by coping then her would have been coughing, or better still wouldn't have gotten a lighter to work. I know I was 5 when my dad taught me about matches and lighters. He's a smoker and if lighters and matches were going to litter the house then I better be able to do it without setting fire to the place.
That kid had skill that no other 3 year old would (or should) have. The kid had done it before. Ergo the kid had a habit.

Then we have a nurse who was struck off the register for killing her husband with an axe. Actually the WTF stems from the fact that she is now wanting to be put back on the register. I understand the background of domestic abuse and that he had done something like fathering a child with his niece or her niece or something. But really would you want a nurse who has a past conviction like that? We are never supposed to judge our patients but I know for a fact that they would judge us and her name is all over the BBC website's stories. I assume that the NMC will stand by their decision. It's all up to the high courts to make a decision. The NMC's on shaky enough ground with the public and it members without dragging this through the press too.

Why Do We Do What We Do?

...or why get into nursing in the first place?
I was reading Julie's blog over @ Life in the NHS. there she was innocently talking about a conference and mixing wines. When it all got semi-hijacked in the comments...
Julie,
I would like your honest opinion. I am registered to begin a PgDip in Adult Nursing. It seems fairly random to ask your advice but when I put in ‘life in the nhs’, ‘nurse’ and ‘mother’ into google this site comes up! I have some concerns about nursing and would like the opinion of an experienced nurse. I am concerned about how nursing fits into family life, but also general career prospects and job satisfaction. I have to say, I read the 2005 RCN report into conditions for nurses and it made sobering reading! My family are concerned about work-life balance and want me to think very carefully, but I’m finding it difficult to get the advice I need. Please help!
Many thanks,
Amy
Oh see I have to stick my oar in now....
Hi Amy,
I think you are wise to think carefully before embarking on a career like nursing. This is an exciting but volatile and changing time to be starting on this particular career pathway. Nursing can be a rewarding and exciting career. There has never been a better time to push the boundaries of what nursing is about, but at the same time many (including nurses) believe this puts pressure on the ability of nurses to perform the basic and fundamental skills of nursing. The most important aspect of these are caring, listening, communicating and providing care. There are jobs available in many areas of work which means that it is possible to work full time, part time, to work at night or during the daytime. Acute care has become more stressful and demanding, work in the community more dynamic and acute focused since people stay in hospital for less of else don’t go there at all. There is also lots of work within prevention and health promotion - this will be increasingly important.
I don’t think nursing conditions are bad. Jobs are pretty secure, but the patient in some way or other needs care over the 24 hour period. We have to be there for the good of our patients not for ourselves. Pension is good, there are good holiday entitlements, paid holiday and sickness - you can do worse and reasonable pay. But it isn’t for everyone, we don’t always make good colleagues for each other and there are good and bad nurses around. I wouldn’t change anything about my career, but then I no longer work at the sharp end.
Hope this ramble helps. I might write a post about some of these points.
Regards,
Julie
Julie's reply is essentially brilliant, it covers all the bases, so why am I sticking my oar in? Well I was commenting anyway.
Hi Amy
I’m about a month from the end of my course and it’s been a real eye opener. I wasn’t clear on what the course was really about when I started. I wouldn’t change any of it for the world but that didn’t stop it being difficult and heartbreaking at times.
However few jobs in this life are as varied and ever changing as nursing. There are hundreds of specialities, different ways of progressing, multiple travel opportunities… There really is a niche for everyone.
If you decide to go for it then you will never regret it and will become evangelical about the benefits. But the sharp end conditions are as they seem. We are stressed and pushed and jaded. While at the same time the greatest voice for our patients and with fight to the death to protect it.
For family life… just remember to leave your work behind when you leave. It’s all too easy to take it home. A lesson I learned only after getting pushed.
Think long and hard. But if it’s your dream go for it!
Love
WardBunny
I do really believe in that. If it's what you've always wanted to do then you should just go for it. Sod the reports, the press, the horror stories. Just do what you want to. So many of us dreamed of being nurses so we're doing what we wanted to do.
Of course there's a lot of people who fell into it but that doesn't make them bad nurses. There are people who dreamed of being nurses but are just not good at it.
It's the hardest training and most stressful in the world but it's also the most rewarding job and it definitely seems to make you a stronger person.

Sometimes You Just Get Days Like That

Today was hell.... An interesting hell but hell none the less.
So many discharges = lots of admits to fill the empty beds.
Patient going 'off' in medical, who needed surgery, and no they don't talk to each other.
Cannula going weird at the sight of a bag of FFP.
So yea..... Having a busy day.
Still got the headache that started the minute I walked through the door. Apparently I'm not the only one having an off day, Chinese Girl Gets Kiss of Deaf. Wow kissing causing deafness.... bring on the hearing aid.


On an up side tomorrow is Day Without a Gay. I would call in to placement gay but I think Sister would have a small problem with that. Not the gay bit just the calling in for a day off bit. My windows vista sidebar magic 8 ball says 'go for it' but I think I'll be getting up in 4 hours anyway.

Do Tattoos Reflect Professionalism?

So there we were sitting around on Twitter shooting the breeze with 140 characters of less when Nurse Connect released this article into the world.
This is somewhat a bug bear for me. I do have a tattoo but even now it's covered by my clothes and is never seen when I'm in placement. You also have to remember that this is the UK and we are governed by the almighty NHS and a simple search of google for 'nhs uniform policy' yields loads of documents from multiple NHS trusts on their specific uniform policies.

Basically it boils down to this.... (only taking into account nursing / other clinical staff)
You get a uniform. Normally navy blue is reserved for Ward Sisters (manager), Deputy Sisters, Specialist Nurses (they are in the same band as the management). White with blue binding is for are the general plebs. Theatres, cath labs, ITU, paeds, etc. will have different uniforms / scrubs. OTs, Physios, Speech and Language Therapists (SaLT), etc. have similar uniforms but different colours for the bands (e.g. our SaLTs have gray, OTs have green). Our student uniforms have the uni's name embroidered on to it (this is quite common though so it's not just us), however it is similar to the Healthcare Assistants (HCA) / Clinical Support Workers (CSW) with plain white tunics, so we get easily confused.

• Ladies' Tunic with trousers
  
• Men's Tunic with trousers
  
• Or the rather rare dress usually worn with a belt.

So right beyond the uniform that you may or may not have to launder yourself.... you are expected to....

• keep long hair tied back (and off collar)
  
• keep nails short and clean (no nail varnish)
  
• wear no (visible) make up
• no jewellery (except a plain wedding band)

They have all but told us when to breathe. This is all in the production of a professional appearance.
Some of the policies I have come across cover tattoos as well.

Inappropriate tattoos must be covered at all times. The head of service/department will be responsible for determining whether a tattoo is inappropriate or not i.e. any tattoo with offensive language is deemed offensive. It is acknowledged that some religions/cultures use henna to decorate their bodies at certain times and this is acceptable.

NHS East Kent

Visible tattoos are to be discouraged....

NHS 5 Boroughs

Considering what we have to put up with this all seems acceptable. I wouldn't want to be looked after by someone with swear words scrawled all over their arms (I would assume that back, chest, legs, etc. would be covered by our uniforms). In this area would a Celtic or Rangers FC tattoo be considered offensive? There is a massive rivalry between these 2 teams in Glasgow, this offers a background. But I guess it would be up to the nursing management. However a Celtic tattoo would be offensive to a Rangers fan and vice versa. So I guess it would be.

As a side note there is a policy of non discrimination when it comes to union affiliation / orientations / etc. So when I came back with the mention of my gay pride badge on my uniform I know that nothing can be said to me about it. We are allowed to wear a certain number of badges proclaiming our union or the school of nursing we graduated from.

My point was that as much as that little proclamation of my pride in who I am on a uniform the same as everyone else's is a reflection of my personality, a tattoo is a reflection of someone else's choice in life. (No I'm not saying my orientation is a choice by the way) So why shouldn't people be able to show off a little bit of their personality by way of body art so long as it isn't offensive?

Fear / Respect

Sister was asking me whither I was scared of the deputy sister. Well yes, I am terrified. You mention that to anyone and you hear muttering along the lines of 'bark' and 'bite'. *If you want me I'll be under the nurse's station rocking back and forth* Then she asked if I was scared of her.....
Oh, cack. There's no good answer here. You say 'no' and it's like she has no real power over you. You say 'yes' and she has infinite power over you because she knows you live in fear.
I may have a pathological fear of anyone in a navy blue tunic (or dress depending on where you are)....

I'm even scared of that picture!

Well I have a 'respectful fear'. You have power. I don't. You've been doing this for years. I know nothing (well next to nothing). Now can I go back to cowering?

P.S. How can you work in a dress? Seriously? Not that you will ever find me in a dress / skirt but come on trousers are so the way to go.

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.

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.

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!

'Normal' Service

After a nice restful weekend, I'm returning to my ranting. There was a study done of lesbian and bisexual women and their perception of healthcare. (oh and yea it's gonna be one of those posts)

Thing is we've already discovered that the NHS is sometimes homophobic. Towards staff and patients.
Come on, you might not notice it but when you assume that someone is being stupid when they answer that they have sex but don't use contraception, it could be discrimination. I answer questions that way and so do most of the LGBT community.

People, that sucks! Why do we not consider the alternatives? I remember multiple lectures on respecting other cultures and religions. The importance of spirituality.

What about the importance of your partner being ignored when you are ill? Them being locked out of knowing how you are doing? Of being too scared to tell your doctor in case you end up getting second rate treatment?

Remember how I call this one of 'those posts'? Heck that was me making assumptions about what people want to read about. Giving them a chance to tune out before they read anything that would offend them.

What I did like was the recommendations...
1. Understand lesbian health needs:
Yea, I think we could do with some training on that. Even I can't tell you some of the answers, aside from that ALL women need smears.
2. Train staff:
To stop saying things that would offend...
3. Don't make assumptions:
I revert to the point I made earlier.
4. Explicit policies:
So we don't discriminate but they are useless if NO one acts on them.
5. Tell lesbians what they need to know:
Some proper health promotion in this area would be a good start.
6. Improve monitoring:

One in ten lesbian and bisexual women stated that when they did come out to a healthcare worker they were either ignored, or the healthcare worker continued to assume they were heterosexual.

Continued to assume? Now that scares me. By all means be offended, I'm used to it, but please I've told you already, I ain't for turning.
7. Increase visibility:
If the NHS wasn't so homophobic towards staff then maybe you'd find out who I am but I'll be the one not making assumptions.
8. Make confidentiality policies clear:
See 4!
9. Make complaints procedures clear:
And again see 4! One proper definitive policy that covers all the bases.
10. Develop tailored services:
Right the NHS is slightly skint so this could be hard to change but the other 9 would make a good start till the money thing is figured out.

Full study here!