Do you find that, despite the smoking ban, you still walk into work amidst a deep smog of cigarette smoke? Recent research shows that the smoking ban on NHS sites is being broken on a daily basis. Those of us who work on NHS sites are no doubt more than aware that the ban is being broken day in, day out, but what can we do about it? The last time I spoke to a patient outside the hospital doors about his smoking, I nearly took a beating!
You would think this research would lead to some sort of directive or the implementation of stronger enforcement, but no. Rather;
"The government said it did not accept the findings and had no evidence to show regulations were being broken."
Hmmm... :)
Monday 3 March 2008
Monday 18 February 2008
Taking Liberties...
Today was my last shift in Eye Casualty, and what a shift it turned out to be. Fortunately there was no bad practice to report this week. Not from a member of the nursing team anyway...
A hefty volume of patients streamed through the doors this morning, many of whom required treatment from the doctor. He was due to turn up at around 09:30.
At 09:50 an air of concern was floating around the department not only for the doctor's welfare, but also for ours as the patients were beginning to become aggressively twitchy. Usually there are two doctors working on a Monday morning, but one was on A/L so it was pretty important that the other doctor arrived pronto before the patients started hurling things at us in an angry manner. So the doctor was telephoned. Where was he?
In bed. Apparently he'd booked the day as A/L but had failed to tell the department. So, we had around 30 patients needing to see the doctor, but no doctor.
Fabulous.
Fortunately, three other doctors were drafted in from elsewhere in the department and saw all the patients in under an hour. Thankgoodness for teamwork!
A hefty volume of patients streamed through the doors this morning, many of whom required treatment from the doctor. He was due to turn up at around 09:30.
At 09:50 an air of concern was floating around the department not only for the doctor's welfare, but also for ours as the patients were beginning to become aggressively twitchy. Usually there are two doctors working on a Monday morning, but one was on A/L so it was pretty important that the other doctor arrived pronto before the patients started hurling things at us in an angry manner. So the doctor was telephoned. Where was he?
In bed. Apparently he'd booked the day as A/L but had failed to tell the department. So, we had around 30 patients needing to see the doctor, but no doctor.
Fabulous.
Fortunately, three other doctors were drafted in from elsewhere in the department and saw all the patients in under an hour. Thankgoodness for teamwork!
Sunday 17 February 2008
Exciting Times Ahead
I am happy to report that my OSCE went rather well. I landed the patient with an asthma attack, and felt I managed it quite efficiently. The only thing I unfortunately did not do, was check for any contraindications before putting the patient on oxygen. So that's 1/2 a mark off. I think it's safe to assume I achieved the 12/20 needed to pass. Glad it's over with!
And on the subject of good news, my paper on dementia and pre-registration education has been accepted by the University and I shall be presenting it to the School of Nursing in June. I received a form today asking me lots of questions such as my qualifications (at last! Something to indicate my BTh status!), learning outcomes for my presentation, and a short biography. Thankgoodness they don't want a picture too...
I have been extremely fortunate to receive the support of Linda Nazarko, an independent nurse consultant who has spent 33 years working with older people, particularly in nursing homes. She has written and published many pieces of work, regularly contributes to popular nursing journals, is an RCN fellow and has also received an OBE. It's such a blessing to be given such a high level of encouragement and support. Mentors and lecturers at University can appear at times to have lost the 'spark' they once had for the job, and become a little disillusioned. It's so encouraging that after 33 years in the NHS, one can still be passionate and excited about nursing. So this could all be the start of a piece of my work being published, which Linda has also offered her help with.
Amazing! I'm obviously jolly excited and rather than go to bed and get some kip before my 12 hour shift tomorrow, I'd like to complete my paper. All in good time...
And on the subject of good news, my paper on dementia and pre-registration education has been accepted by the University and I shall be presenting it to the School of Nursing in June. I received a form today asking me lots of questions such as my qualifications (at last! Something to indicate my BTh status!), learning outcomes for my presentation, and a short biography. Thankgoodness they don't want a picture too...
I have been extremely fortunate to receive the support of Linda Nazarko, an independent nurse consultant who has spent 33 years working with older people, particularly in nursing homes. She has written and published many pieces of work, regularly contributes to popular nursing journals, is an RCN fellow and has also received an OBE. It's such a blessing to be given such a high level of encouragement and support. Mentors and lecturers at University can appear at times to have lost the 'spark' they once had for the job, and become a little disillusioned. It's so encouraging that after 33 years in the NHS, one can still be passionate and excited about nursing. So this could all be the start of a piece of my work being published, which Linda has also offered her help with.
Amazing! I'm obviously jolly excited and rather than go to bed and get some kip before my 12 hour shift tomorrow, I'd like to complete my paper. All in good time...
Thursday 14 February 2008
Coughing up Biro
Tomorrow is loombing large and I'm not feeling jolly: it's the dreaded Objective Structured Clinical Examination...
The aim? To assess a "patient" in ten minutes to determine whether the problem is respiratory, cardiovascular or neurological and to explain/discuss any relevant nursing interventions. Not all bad, and actually quite an enjoyable challenge, but for some reason that stop-watch turns me into a quivering wreck. In contrast to that, I know I'll have to refrain from laughing should I get a patient with hypoglycemia (acting in a drunk, aggitated manner) or a patient with a PE (supposedly coughing up blood, but the prop tissue is actually covered with red biro).
That said, it will certainly be interesting to see the efforts people have made to look smart. Ironed uniforms, polished shoes and neat hair will be a thing of the past a few weeks into our next placement. I'd better find my ironing board... ;)
The aim? To assess a "patient" in ten minutes to determine whether the problem is respiratory, cardiovascular or neurological and to explain/discuss any relevant nursing interventions. Not all bad, and actually quite an enjoyable challenge, but for some reason that stop-watch turns me into a quivering wreck. In contrast to that, I know I'll have to refrain from laughing should I get a patient with hypoglycemia (acting in a drunk, aggitated manner) or a patient with a PE (supposedly coughing up blood, but the prop tissue is actually covered with red biro).
That said, it will certainly be interesting to see the efforts people have made to look smart. Ironed uniforms, polished shoes and neat hair will be a thing of the past a few weeks into our next placement. I'd better find my ironing board... ;)
Sunday 3 February 2008
A Not So Dire Emergency
As a child I was taught that 999 was a very important number used in emergencies only, to the extent that I would still be very cautious of dialing it now for fear of jamming the phone line and preventing a real emergency call from being answered.It would appear that many people don't quite share the same perspective. I've heard all manner of outrageous stories; people phoning 999 for the date, the local B&Q number, period pain...
This week a patient was brought into Eye Casualty by ambulance having dialed 999 because she had conjunctivitis.
Give me strength!!
Friday 1 February 2008
Dementia Poll
Now that the sheer excitement of my eye retrieval drama has subsided, I am working on a paper to present at our School of Nursing Conference in June. The conference is focusing on pre-registration education and my paper is all about dementia.
Without regurgitating the entirity of my paper here, let me enlighten you with a few statistics...
With around 163,000 new diagnoses being made annually dementia has been described as “one of the greatest challenges for medicine, nursing and society in the twenty-first century”. Dementia predominantly affects the elderly and as the number of people aged over 65 years is expected to increase by more than 60% in the next 25 years, it is not unrealistic to expect the number of dementia diagnoses being made to increase. In fact, while an estimated 700,000 people are currently diagnosed with dementia, this figure is expected to increase to one million by 2025.
That's a lot of people, eh? As we've received absolutely no education on dementia at university, the conclusion for my paper is that they need to provide some! Obviously we need to engage in independent learning, but if such a crucial area of health care is being ignored by lecturers it gives the impression that it isn't very important which belittles those with dementia (it also didn't help that our one lecture on Alzheimer's was cancelled and never rescheduled).
I'll get off my high horse now :)
I'd be interested to know, however, what your education in dementia has been like - send me a post or complete the poll.
Thank you!
Without regurgitating the entirity of my paper here, let me enlighten you with a few statistics...
With around 163,000 new diagnoses being made annually dementia has been described as “one of the greatest challenges for medicine, nursing and society in the twenty-first century”. Dementia predominantly affects the elderly and as the number of people aged over 65 years is expected to increase by more than 60% in the next 25 years, it is not unrealistic to expect the number of dementia diagnoses being made to increase. In fact, while an estimated 700,000 people are currently diagnosed with dementia, this figure is expected to increase to one million by 2025.
That's a lot of people, eh? As we've received absolutely no education on dementia at university, the conclusion for my paper is that they need to provide some! Obviously we need to engage in independent learning, but if such a crucial area of health care is being ignored by lecturers it gives the impression that it isn't very important which belittles those with dementia (it also didn't help that our one lecture on Alzheimer's was cancelled and never rescheduled).
I'll get off my high horse now :)
I'd be interested to know, however, what your education in dementia has been like - send me a post or complete the poll.
Thank you!
Thursday 31 January 2008
I'll Have Your Eye Out!
Are you squeamish? If so, you may not appreciate this post!
I spent Tuesday with Wayne, the corneal eye retrieval nurse. Wayne's job is to assess the eligability of all deceased patients to donate their eyes for corneal transplant. Obviously this role is immersed in ethical, professional and legal issues and therefore many patients are unable to donate. For example, if "confusion ? cause" is written in the patient's notes, they cannot donate just incase their confusion is due to a degenerative neurological disease (e.g. dementia or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease). Other contraindications include;
I spent Tuesday with Wayne, the corneal eye retrieval nurse. Wayne's job is to assess the eligability of all deceased patients to donate their eyes for corneal transplant. Obviously this role is immersed in ethical, professional and legal issues and therefore many patients are unable to donate. For example, if "confusion ? cause" is written in the patient's notes, they cannot donate just incase their confusion is due to a degenerative neurological disease (e.g. dementia or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease). Other contraindications include;
- long-term corticosteriodal use
- IVDU
- Stabbings/traumatic RTA
- Malignancy
- HIV, Hep B/C
- Auto-immune diseases
- Diseases of unknown aetiology
So to you doctors out there, please write CLEARLY in patient's notes so that these can be found easily!
If the deceased patient is deemed suitable, the family are contacted and asked about donation. If there's any uncertainty among the family, the donation cannot be carried out. If the family consent, Wayne has 24 hours from time of death to get those eyes out!
This is the fun part: getting into our mortuary greens, plastic shoes and what can only be described as a plastic version of a butcher's apron! The patient was in the mortuary ready: a 99 year old gentleman who had actually been extremely healthy - his eyes were in fantastic condition. And so the removal process began. I was fortunate enough to remove the patient's left eye :)
The process is actually very straightforward, and easy when you know how. We began by securing the patient's eye open with what can only be described as mini tongs! These keep the eyelids out of the way. Then, the muscles need to be cut. Six extrinsic muscles are attached to the eyeball and walls of the orbital cavity; four rectus and two oblique. A small hook is placed down each side of the eyeball to pull the muscle out a little, enabling it to be cut.
Once all six muscles are cut, the only thing holding the eyeball in place is the optic nerve (II cranial nerve). A curved pair of scissors is used to feel for and cut the nerve located at the back of the eye. This is quite tricky - cutting the optic nerve is like trying to cut through electrical cable! Then the eye can be removed.
Saline-soaked gauze is placed into the orbital cavity and covered with a small piece of plastic covered with nicks in order to hold the eyelid shut. The eyes were then packaged up and sent off to Manchester. Someone can now be cured from cataracts because of this donation. Amazing!
I then observed the removal of a heart for organ donation... How morbid do I sound?!
A Messy Matter of Bad Practice: Part 2
Well, I turned up to work following the writing of a report against a registered nurse, and what a shift it turned out to be...
The nurse in question barely took any notice of me all day which was probably a good thing, until she bellowed at me in the reception area! I wasn't quite prepared for that, and apparently stood bewildered whilst trying to muster an appropriate response. The nurse then made a patient cry.
Nice one.
Later on and feeling victimised, this nurse phoned an RCN rep who spent about an hour in the Sister's office with her. We were a little surprised yet relieved when the RCN rep sent the nurse home and informed her that she wouldn't be working on Eye Casualty again. However, the following day she was working on a ward upstairs causing more trouble. Apparently she shouted at the ward Sister in front of a bay full of patients...
So it's a continuing issue and one which I'm no longer privy to. Let's hope things are sorted out as quickly as possible without further atrocity. And that my report isn't called for in a legal environment!
The nurse in question barely took any notice of me all day which was probably a good thing, until she bellowed at me in the reception area! I wasn't quite prepared for that, and apparently stood bewildered whilst trying to muster an appropriate response. The nurse then made a patient cry.
Nice one.
Later on and feeling victimised, this nurse phoned an RCN rep who spent about an hour in the Sister's office with her. We were a little surprised yet relieved when the RCN rep sent the nurse home and informed her that she wouldn't be working on Eye Casualty again. However, the following day she was working on a ward upstairs causing more trouble. Apparently she shouted at the ward Sister in front of a bay full of patients...
So it's a continuing issue and one which I'm no longer privy to. Let's hope things are sorted out as quickly as possible without further atrocity. And that my report isn't called for in a legal environment!
Tuesday 22 January 2008
A Messy Matter of Bad Practice
As a student nurse, I've spent the best part of two and a half years being beaten with the NMC Code of Professional Conduct. I like to think I've learnt a thing or two from it, and that my practice is in accordance with what it states. So what do you do when you meet a qualified nurse whose practice is questionable?
Always a tricky one - to say something could seriously jeapordise your placement final report and make the rest of the placement a nightmare. But then surely we have a responsibility to pick nurses up on bad practice?
This week I have been working alongside such a nurse. I'm sure she's a lovely person; perhaps she's just become somewhat disillusioned with the job. The other staff have also found her extremely difficult to work with, to the extent that we all looked like we'd worked a 14 hour shift after about 20 mins! The Sister asked myself and the other student there on placement to write a short report about this nurse's conduct/practice, which we did. We then discovered the nurse in question was writing a report about us...
So I'm dreading going in to work tomorrow. We were very careful as to what we did and didn't write in our report, trying to avoid accusations and generalisations. I've just read the report again and feel confident in what was written. I'm still rather nervous though... Let's hope something positive comes of it all.
Always a tricky one - to say something could seriously jeapordise your placement final report and make the rest of the placement a nightmare. But then surely we have a responsibility to pick nurses up on bad practice?
This week I have been working alongside such a nurse. I'm sure she's a lovely person; perhaps she's just become somewhat disillusioned with the job. The other staff have also found her extremely difficult to work with, to the extent that we all looked like we'd worked a 14 hour shift after about 20 mins! The Sister asked myself and the other student there on placement to write a short report about this nurse's conduct/practice, which we did. We then discovered the nurse in question was writing a report about us...
So I'm dreading going in to work tomorrow. We were very careful as to what we did and didn't write in our report, trying to avoid accusations and generalisations. I've just read the report again and feel confident in what was written. I'm still rather nervous though... Let's hope something positive comes of it all.
Thursday 17 January 2008
The Art of Communication
It's been an interesting couple of weeks on Eye Casualty so far...
That aside, we do also see some very sad cases, particularly of young people whose vision has become severely compromised due to simple accidents. I always find it difficult to triage young people, particularly if they're distressed. It certainly encourages you not to take your sight for granted.
We had a lovely 86 year old gentleman with us yesterday. He suffers from Parkinson's and had fallen over. He had a fantastic bruise on the left side of his face. Maxillo Facial sent him to us to ensure his eyes were ok before they got involved. I often find that elderly patients are stereotyped as "confused" all the time. While this gentleman would have been confused following such a bang to his head, it will generally wear off. He was on the ball when I had a cuppa with him - he told me about his adventures during WW2 as a Wellington navigator.
Another elderly lady was with us this week, a Polish lady who moved here after WW2. At 12 years old, she was taken to a ghetto in Germany. It was facinating learning about her life and understanding how different our world is today.
That's the luxury of being a student nurse - we have opportunities to sit down and talk to patients. I'll certainly miss that when I qualify, but aim to talk with patients as much as I can. All good for holistic care I reckon.
- One patient asked for "Dr Gaylord", when they were actually due to see Dr Hayward.
- An elderly lady telephoned to find out if it would be suitable for her to come in. I asked her what the problem with her eyes was and she began, "well in 2004..." It was a long conversation!
- Whilst triaging a patient, he kept referring to me as "doctor" regardless of my uniform.
- And a very nice gentleman asked me out for a drink. He was blind.
That aside, we do also see some very sad cases, particularly of young people whose vision has become severely compromised due to simple accidents. I always find it difficult to triage young people, particularly if they're distressed. It certainly encourages you not to take your sight for granted.
We had a lovely 86 year old gentleman with us yesterday. He suffers from Parkinson's and had fallen over. He had a fantastic bruise on the left side of his face. Maxillo Facial sent him to us to ensure his eyes were ok before they got involved. I often find that elderly patients are stereotyped as "confused" all the time. While this gentleman would have been confused following such a bang to his head, it will generally wear off. He was on the ball when I had a cuppa with him - he told me about his adventures during WW2 as a Wellington navigator.
Another elderly lady was with us this week, a Polish lady who moved here after WW2. At 12 years old, she was taken to a ghetto in Germany. It was facinating learning about her life and understanding how different our world is today.
That's the luxury of being a student nurse - we have opportunities to sit down and talk to patients. I'll certainly miss that when I qualify, but aim to talk with patients as much as I can. All good for holistic care I reckon.
Sunday 6 January 2008
A New Year, A New NHS?
It's a new year! And what better way to welcome in 2008 than with - you've guessed it - another shuffle in the NHS!
While we're all still in the throws of recovering from the last major shuffle (Agenda for Change), Gordon Brown has seemingly decided that he would like a turn. Cue the NHS Constitution - an outline of the rights and responsibilites to be expected in healthcare. Not a bad idea, but when Gordon Brown warns of "a major shake-up", it just doesn't appear quite so simple...
Months of debates and reviews are set to ensue before the shake-up becomes a reality, but as Dr Michael Dixon (chairman of the NHS Alliance) stated, "To the average member of the public and patients and, frankly, doctor or nurse it doesn't mean much. It's just another big idea from on high."
Happy New Year!
While we're all still in the throws of recovering from the last major shuffle (Agenda for Change), Gordon Brown has seemingly decided that he would like a turn. Cue the NHS Constitution - an outline of the rights and responsibilites to be expected in healthcare. Not a bad idea, but when Gordon Brown warns of "a major shake-up", it just doesn't appear quite so simple...
Months of debates and reviews are set to ensue before the shake-up becomes a reality, but as Dr Michael Dixon (chairman of the NHS Alliance) stated, "To the average member of the public and patients and, frankly, doctor or nurse it doesn't mean much. It's just another big idea from on high."
Happy New Year!
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