WeNurses are launching a new monthly blog for all of our lovely student nurse followers, and we want you to be part of it!
One of our aims this year is to increase student participation and engagement within the @WeNurses community and after some brainstorming we have decided to launch @WeNurses Student Nurse Blog! As student nurses it is encouraging and motivating to know that we are not alone, and so we would love to hear about your experiences and thoughts as we all make our journey towards being registered nurses. In return for participating, you will receive a certificate with your name on which you can include in your personal development records.
At the end of each months student night Twitter chat, wewill be letting you know the topic for that months blog. You then have until the next student night to post your blog post on the @WeNurses Student Nurse Blog page! You will be able to see everyone’s contributions for that month underneath the initial blog post, similar to how comments appear on other blogs on the WeCommunties site.
Rules
Most importantly our first topic will be Your First Day On Placement. To add your post go HERE
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@bethhl8
26 July 2016 18:01
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Hello! My name is Bethany Collins, I am a first year student childrens nurse at Sheffield Hallam University. Although I'm still at the beginning of my nursing journey completing assignments, preparing for placement and watching Netflix, I often think about what I want to do when I finish my degree. Before I started my degree I was convinced I wanted to be a midwife, a few days on a maternity ward and a transfer to neonatal made me realise my passion was actually family centred care focused more on the child. Since starting my degree I've found myself much preferring community nursing as you get to build long term relationships and truly provide family centred care. On the ward I found that although I was taught to provide family centred care, it was more difficult to practice compared to community work. I found myself forgetting names and even mixing genders of patients as I rushed into bays and rooms without checking who I was seeing and why they were there. As I went into nursing to make a difference, help others and provide high quality care, I feel like I would prefer to do this in the community as I feel like you get to spend more time getting to know families and their needs whilst caring for them in the hospital is just a small snapshot with the aim to make the patient better without personally getting to know them as a person. With this in mind I hope to qualify and go into School Nursing or Health Visiting! |
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@LauraRuns89
23 March 2016 10:12
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My name is Laura and I am in my first year of the two year MSc Adult Nurse course at the University of Essex, previously working as a Health and Wellbeing Physiologist. I did an Ironman triathlon in 2014 after starting the sport in 2012, so I am always trying to balance my time between studying and training! #WeSTNBlog My first day of placement was back in November. It started with the handover (and already I was feeling intimidated by the speed of medical jargon reeled off). It was my first experience of hospital work, and it wasn’t what I’d expected - everyone was very nice but everything seemed so rushed with patients and I felt a nuisance asking questions/acting like a shadow. A few patients stood out to me during the day. One lady in her late 80’s had come in due to exacerbation of COPD and was showing signs of confusion. I spoke to her, and she said she was in a lot of pain in her knee which was very badly swollen. She was worried about her Husband who was 93, had Alzheimer’s and was home alone. She said she was his carer but also said he had an external carer (only for an hour and then he would be on his own). She was very worried and kept saying she wanted to go home. No one seemed concerned about her self-discharging – or that her Husband may have been unsafe. I was a little disheartened by the care she received, and I went on my break feeling quite discouraged. Everyone was nice and there was no bad/dangerous care. The Nurse however did not seem concerned that we didn’t know if her NOK had been contacted, and came across that it ‘wasn’t our job’ to worry about her husband or the fact that this was worrying her. He was ready to send her home as soon as possible as ‘we needed the bed’. I was shocked at how cold it all felt. It wasn’t that he didn’t care but he was sometimes quite abrupt to her because he was rushing to help others. I was relieved when I came back from my break and the Nurse told me he had called social services (making them aware of the Husband), and arranged a Physiotherapy assessment before sending her home to help with her knee. I realised that I was too quick to judge – the Nurse did act in the best care for the patient in the end. I probably should have appreciated a bit more how much pressure he was under for beds from A&E. I also had my faith restored when I helped some HCAs perform ‘last offices’ (yes, on my first shift!) on an elderly lady who passed away shortly after arriving on the ward. When she arrived we were shocked to see how little personal care she had received, especially when we knew her family were on the way to say goodbye to her for the final time. The Nurses, HCAs and myself worked together to get her as comfortable and clean as possible before her family arrived, and the care/respect they showed during last offices was exceptional. I learnt a great deal about how to provide excellent care to patients, and their families – but also how to be less quick to judge! |
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@hypernatrhimia
20 March 2016 20:51
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I’m Rhianydd, and I have just began my final year of training as an Adult Nursing Student at University of South Wales. Arriving on the ward (despite having travelled for almost 2 hours via public transport to get to the hospital), I was a mixture of emotions. There were nerves, excitement, anticipation and most of all dread. I had never worked in this environment before, what if I was making a huge mistake? What if someone has a cardiac arrest on my first day? How do I talk to the nurses let alone the patients? Swallowing all this down and putting on a smile, we all went to handover. Oh the acronyms. “We have a NOF in 3 who’s scoring a 5. They’re NBM and have a DNA insitu.” These are all acronyms that I’m sure all nurses come across almost everyday, but to say I was puzzled really does not quite cut it. Asking the staff nurse I was on with what all these meant she said for me to just sit there quietly and she would explain all later (this never happened). Handover finished and I was none-the-wiser. The staff nurse turned to me and said “this lady is a 1, so you can help her have a wash and get ready for breakfast”, with that she was gone. What on earth does a “1” mean? I had no idea what I was doing, all I could think was, this poor woman has never set eyes on me in her life, and I’m about to assist her to have a shower? I felt embarrassed, empathy and even guilt that she had to go through this. But I made sure I introduced myself, and we made polite conversation. We even had a bit of a giggle. Later on in the day one of the elderly ladies who was suffering with dementia grabbed me, she was dreadfully upset because she could not find her parents and they would be worried about her. What do you say in this situation? I wanted to comfort her, and reassure her but words failed me. I assisted her back to her seat and tried to change the conversation to something a bit more cheery. Looking back I could have asked for more help, but getting on with it is what helped me learn and as my time as a student nurse has progressed, so has my confidence. I no longer fear asking questions (if anything quite the opposite). I grow to love this job more and more, the people I meet and work with, the things I learn, the experiences and opportunities I’m given. Since this time 2 years ago I was just starting my journey as a nurse, my first day of placement is something I often think about when I hit a wall and think “I can’t do this”. It helps me remember where I began, how far I have come and how it has helped me grow as a person. |
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@PUNC14rasutton
03 March 2016 00:00
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Who am I, i hear you ask, I'm Rosie, first year Adult Nursing Student at Plymouth University. My first day on placement didn't go exactly as I planned. I walked on to the ward, introduced myself to the first staff nurse there. The deputy matron hadn't passed on that I was starting today, luckily the staff nurse welcomed me to the team. Small community hospital, 12 beds, what could go wrong? For me, everything. The first patient I met ran over my foot with their Zimmer frame, and then asked me to take them to the toilet. That's fine, I had been a community care assistant before I started uni, how hard could it be? Considering there had been Norovirus on the ward a few days ago, the welcoming news that this patient had literally made it to the toilet in time, the loose bowels had not settled in this 'clean' ward. The staff nurse asked me what type the patient had had, I looked at her and said 'Type??'. What did this mean, I read the 'student nurse bible' aka the Royal Marsden Clinical skills book, I had no idea, she laughed it off and said 'On the stool chart, what type of movement did she have?' I again looked puzzled, the stool chart, did this mean the type of seat she sat on, is this a joke?.. She showed me the Bristol Stool chart, and it all came clear. See, in the community, we didn't use these, we just simply said that the patient had their bowels open and that was that. After confirming the type, and later finding out the patient has dementia, we needed to move them to a side room, but you guessed it, there were none available. There were three side rooms, two with patients on end of life care and one with ESBL in their urine. We needed to establish what we were going to do, no way could we have a patient with type 6/7 stools in a clean bay. With the advice from the local major hospital. Because the ESBL patient was continent, they could move into the main bay. The patients swapped places, after a deep clean in the side room. The patient who moved into the side room was becoming more and more confused, they had formed a bond with me and proceeded to tell me that their doctor is still expecting them to go to work, even though they were 85. With the confusion and the fact the patient appeared to calm with me, I stayed with them for an hour or so, reassuring her that all was well and talking about the past, the mood turned from despair to laughing and joking about the time their son was chasing the dog in the garden and ended up in the garden pond. I learnt the importance of ensuring the patient was safe, maintaining dignity and most importantly felt heard. I also, most importantly learnt what the stool chart meant, and how to differentiate between types. I learnt the importance of communication and empathy. I learnt that I was human, I put myself in the patients shoes, where was I? I was in a hospital I only arrived at 5 hours before, it was my first time in the area and my first time in a clinical environment where I wasn't the patient. It was easier to empathise with them, or maybe it was me with the dementia! |
