Video and weekly update

Happy soggy weekend all!

Well, the weather is a tad different compared to the mini 'heatwave' of last weekend. Now is the weather to get back behind my desk and get on with my work. I say work...so far I have been browsing internet shopping websites and Rightmove, sending out a few emails and now am here with you! I know I have always been aware that sometimes it is best to start with the jobs that feel like a chore first but I need to hunt down my essay writing motivation first!

Firstly, here is a link to a video I was in back in January. I do cringe when I watch it as do not regard myself as photogenic or camera-friendly, and do find like my six year old self I do overuse the word, 'Um'. It is a short video on my experiences at the University, so I hope it comes in useful :) For a general video on the University of Bedfordshire as a whole, this one has been appearing at some cinemas recently, but if you have not managed to catch it, here it is

Nearly there...

So, my week up to now unfortunately has not been very exciting in terms of news. I have had three shifts working at the hospital and really do feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. My mentors have been so supportive, so much in fact I have just sent an email to the Chief Executive of the hospital I am based letting her know how much I have appreciated the support from all staff. I had always hoped that the other nurses would be supportive, but I have also taken away so much from Health Care Assistants, specialist nurses, consultants and not forgetting ward cleaners and housekeepers. I now have until the 12th June to complete my LAST EVER ESSAY but feel good about it despite not having actually started it (well...I have a plan and some library books?!). I have started hearing murmerings of Graduation, but ours will not be until November, which will be a good opportunity to catch up with my classmates. Up to this point I didn't really think about going to Graduation as it seemed so far away, but the past three years has abolutely flown by so I guess I can start dreaming and planning my outfit!

St Mary's...place of Graduation

One thing I was thinking about the other day was whether the new plans for potential nurses to complete Health Care Assistant work first before starting the university course across England would affect whether people opt to apply for the course? If you want to read more about it, just Google the Francis Report and there is a lot of information to get your teeth stuck in to. I would be interested in any comments on this.
 

So, that is me for another week. I'm guessing those who have applied for September already know whether they have been offered a place (conditional or unconditional)? I hope all of your preparations are going well, and for those in college I hope exam prep is going well also!

Speak to you soon
Em x

Happy Sunny Sunday!

Hi All!

Well as you can see outside it is gloriously sunny! (apologies for those who are not experiencing the sunshine). I am fortunate to have a long weekend off which I feel is being a rather productive one.
I submitted my degree project on Friday and am a bit dubious about how I have done but hey, you can only try your best. I went into town to get my work printed and bound and am rather glad to have saved the document as both a Word and PDF document as the Word version at the printers was different to mine so the layout was completely wrong. Thank you PDF!
I had told myself that yesterday I would be getting on with my next uni work but the sunshine got the better of me (and the BBQ). So this morning I was at the computer at 8.30am to type up my plan and get it emailed over to my lecturer to review before I continue writing the essay. It is due in mid-June but luckily the University has organised for us to be on 30hr working weeks on placement until it is due, so bit of a relief!

The last week at placement has flown by, especially as I was only in for two long days. Five weeks down with eight left to go...quite scary! I have had the privilage of being closely involved in one patients' care for the past few weeks who has really touched me. Throughout your training and career you will meet people who somehow really move you and cause you to go home with them in mind. Don't get me wrong, I care for all of the people I came into contact with, but sometimes just a random thing can touch you such as the way they talk reminds you of your own loved one, or even their family unit can remind you of your own. Sometimes someone affects you so much but you just don't know why. This patient in particular hit a nerve I think as sometimes things happen and it appears completely unfair, and sometimes you feel for them as they just never seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But despite feeling how unfair it is on them, I also feel glad I could have been there for them also. Caring and compassion are essential qualities of anyone going into nursing, but sometimes because of these qualities you have you may find it difficult to not take certain emotions home. I can't say I appreciate my own life more due to others suffering, but I now see that every day is precious, and you have to make the most of it. I find in situations where you feel particularly moved or emotional it is good to talk to people such as your mentor as they can listen, understand and usually tell you an experience they had years ago of a patient who equally moved them and they have never forgotten. We are also encouraged to write reflections to learn from these expereriences, and I guess this post could be described as one of these.
So that is me for another week. Go outside and enjoy the warmth....they say the weather is the subject most discussed by the British so go on, go and relax :)

Talk to you next week
Em x




Stephen Sutton


On another note, I believe this young man deserved a mention as he has done such good in his life and moved so many. Rest In Peace Stephen

Feeling rather positive :)

Evening All :)

Welcome to the end of the weekend...how have your been? Busy? Back at college in the morning or work? And how was your weekend?

Despite almost falling asleep as I type, I am feeling very positive. It's funny how your mind set can change completely from one week (or day) to the next.



Our company for the most of the 26miles

I've just got back from a weekend up North and we made it...26.6miles walk complete along Hadrian's Wall and it definitely was a challenge. One of the other girls I was with experienced quite a bit of pain but kept on going and we got to the end of the trek together and managed to raise around £800. My legs are extremely stiff today and I have a long shift tomorrow so I'm hoping that regular ibuprofen and muscle rub will keep me moving!

The week ahead is looking good though. Am only in for two long shifts tomorrow and Thursday which gives me a couple of days to tidy up my degree project and hopefully get it bound and submitted on Friday. The weekend will hopefully be spent writing up a plan to my next essay to get some support and then I can get started on that. I never used to submit plans of essays beforehand, but was encouraged to do so by a lecturer a while ago and it really has helped to keep me on track. I emailed the lecturer in charge of the unit for the next essay with two topic suggestions and received some really good feedback, along with the offer that if I put together a plan she would happily advise me on any key points before I start to write it. If you do end up going to the UoB, make sure you make the most of your lecturers. The unit information tends to state that you need to submit plans a minimum of a couple of weeks before the essay is due, but it is worth it as I have known on a few occasions students to submit a very well written essay but receive low marks or even a fail due to going completely off topic so lecturer advice can hopefully reduce this risk!

When you are on placement, a support (link) lecturer usually visits the hospital on a weekly basis, so if you need any help or advise regarding placement, they are always available. We also can attend a monthly student forum at the hospital giving us the opportunity to raise issues and have an hour of teaching from a member of the hospital staff (it was the blood transfusion nurse on this occasion). We were told that the jobs for the Luton & Dunstable hospital are now up on the NHS Jobs website for those qualifying in September, so there is a general buzz of excitement and anticipation amongst the students. The link for the advert can be found by clicking here, and it may be worth a look just to get some idea of what they tend to look for. As seen in the advert that despite being a public advert, they aim it at the UoB students only which was definitely a course selling point for applying to this course!

Right, I best be off as will be up early and may fall asleep on this keyboard otherwise! Hope you all have a nice week!

Em x 

Long Bank Holiday weekend off? What's that?!

Hi all from a lovely sunny evening in Luton :)

How are things? Are you enjoying a lovely weekend off? I can't keep up with bank holidays and holidays at the moment...I'm thinking the next week off for a lot of people is at the end of May?

Would be nice...

The only way I tend to know that the schools and colleges are closed is when I wonder why there are hardly any cars around in the afternoon. I have just finished my third week of placement and so far I have only had early shifts (7am-2.50pm) or long days (7am-9.30pm). This week I worked four days finishing with a long day yesterday and got home, had something to eat and went straight to bed. I then woke at 7am this morning naturally to then get up and get back behind the desk to finish my degree project draft. The pressure started to hit when I realised that I am now back on placement tomorrow for four more shifts in a row and then away for charity work all weekend. No time at all to do my university work! I wish I was one of those people who could get home from an early and get on with my work but all I do is get home, have a cup of tea, chill and have an early night.

Regarding working on the Bank Holiday tomorrow, the university does tell us that students are not expected to work on a bank holiday. This is great for those with plans or children, but as I had neither (oh the exciting life I lead!) I chose to work it, as I would just have had to make up the hours another time.

The long shift yesterday was my second in two weeks. The total duty time after breaks was 13 1/2 hrs but to be fair it flew by. Different wards follow different shift patterns, most seem to be 7 1/2 or 12hr shifts. I had some positive feedback yesterday from one of the consultants on the ward, which seemed to make it all worthwhile. When on placement you will find times when either your feet ache, you feel overwhelmed or just maybe you want to hide away, but you will equally get moments that make you think you are getting there.

So with 10 weeks left, I have a draft of my 4500 word project (currently sitting 1000 words over so need to do a lot of condensing!) and am on the hunt for a good scenario on placement for my next essay that is due in the middle of June. I am literally counting the days to that moment when all of my written work has been submitted and I may have a day or two off to rest up and be lazy!


So please make the most of your week off at the end of May if you get it, and the summer off (unless you are in that lovely position where you plan on working up until the point of starting the course!). I really look back now and think I took time off for granted, and each year that passed I promised myself I would be more organised the next and use my time more wisely. Don't plan too much or if you do, don't feel bad at actually doing things other than uni prep. Everyone needs to wind down and switch off sometimes, mine will be my two months off in summer! I will be doing nothing but packing to move and sunbathing!

No matter how many bank holidays or weekends you may find yourself working, just remember how much it will pay off in the end. Trust me, the three years fly by so if in doubt, count down towards summer and always make sure you have something to look forward to (and think of the money you are saving by not going out ;)

Hope all is good your end!
Emma x

What a long week!

Hi All :)

Finally have a chance to get onto the laptop to say hello. Have just finished three early shifts on the ward and a long day yesterday (was there for 14.5 hours). I now have four days off in a row but have decided to have the ultimate lazy day today followed by three days committed to university work before another week on placement.

Wear good footwear for the standing

My second week on the ward has gone smoothly. I was previously on a care of the elderly ward which is very fast-paced and hard work, and am now on a ward where I find the pace and patient group completely different. Now I am looking after patients who usually go home within a few days of admittance, so there is a lot of focus on organised discharges. There is also a lot of pre-operative and post-operative care, which wasn't present on the last medical ward. I had the opportunity yesterday of following one of the patients from ward to theatre to recovery, which I found interesting. Some people aren't keen on watching procedures, but I find anatomy far easier to learn and understand when it is visually in front of me, so to speak!


Or weekends...

I know a lot of the 'normal' university students have probably just returned to study this week or maybe next...who knows, as unlike a typical university theory based course we do not get the same time off. So I'm afraid no months and months off sorry, just seven official leave weeks scheduled.

Hope the prep for university is coming along well for you all :)

Chat to you next week!
Em x

The (official) start of placement and advice for you :)

Hi All :)

Well after the last week or so of being rather non-productive, I finally have managed to start sitting down and typing. The strange thing is I rather enjoy it when I get into the work, but as soon as I get distracted by something...anything else, the whole day seems to go down the drain. The other day I got to my desk first thing and thought enough of the note writing, research hunting and draft planning, just write. I managed to get 750words done in less than two hours. So it isn't that I can't do it, it's just I find it hard to get in the right frame of mind to just do it. Maybe the pressure of wanting to have it given in to the printers to bind in 4weeks will keep me going!

Sink or swim!?

Yesterday was my first official start of my management placement, and first day working with my main mentor who will be the one to sign me as fit to practice as a nurse in less than 13weeks time. No pressure then! After speaking to her I found her approach very much a 'push students in at the deep end to see if they sink or swim', then when/if any weak areas arise, that is where the focus will be placed. So in my first 7 1/2 hour shift I assisted with a patient drug round and went on a ward round with the consultant in place of my mentor to take notes of what the nursing plan would be for each of the patients visited. I then communicated this information back to the appropriate nurses who were in charge of those patients. In the third year you are expected to start recognising that it wont be long until you graduate, but for your management placement you are expected to start seeing yourself as a qualified nurse. In the next 13weeks I will be expected to run a bay of my own patients, give handovers to other staff at the end of a shift, prioritise my workload and assist newer staff such as other student nurses to demonstrate leadership ability.

My own unofficial advice

If I were to offer any advice of your placements, it would be:

•  really think about what you want out of it before completing your goals/learning objectives in your assessment document within the first week of placement.
• When telephoning your placement area to introduce yourself it is up to you whether you ask to visit the area before starting placement with them. I like to do this so I am aware of basic things such as toilet and changing facilities, discuss shifts and meet your mentor beforehand. I haven't done this on all placements but I have always asked if they recommend any reading beforehand that will enhance my experience.
• Grab every opportunity with both hands. Work with other members of the team such as nurse specialists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists. Anyone really who also work with your patients.
• Everyone's experiences will be different, so don't worry or compare yourself to other students. In my first placement I was still very much used to full time working, and learnt that at first I needed to observe and gain the evidence based information before I could then be competent in caring for my patients. 
• Listen to your mentors but be pro-active about your learning. A lot of it is the more you give, the more you can take away.
•  Don't disregard any member of staff on the ward as less important. I learnt my best hospital bed sheet corners and witnessed some of the most compassionate care from HCA's. I recognised that many of the housekeepers who offer hot drinks and meal options know the patients the best as are not there to offer care but someone to talk to.
• Discharge officers are amazing to gain information from. They start planning patient discharge from admission, so you can really learn a lot by shadowing them.
• Communication between teams is key. Without this everything just slows down completely.
• In the second year I became involved with handovers and ward rounds. It's never to early to start and it means by the third year it wont seem as daunting.
• If a training session pops up, ask if you can go along too. I have recently seen an advert for an hour long dementia awareness training session, but have been lucky to have participated in a vascular access refreshers day, helping with a hospital audit, being part of a team who assess wards through observation and been involved in discussion of improvement of nursing documentation within the hospital. There is no harm in asking and what have you got to lose?

Please feel free to ask anything :)

If there is anything else you want to know, please don't hesitate to ask me, whether about placement or the actual university side of things. I'll be blogging until early August so I'm happy to help :)

Until next time, auvoir!x

PMA! PMA! PMA!

Chime in with me....'PMA!'

Positive Mental Attitude

Sometimes it is so easy to focus on the negatives and 'what if' but sometimes this can take over so much that you look back at the end of a day or week and realise that you've allowed no time for making the situation better.

I felt a bit like this last week. I put too much pressure on my shoulders of getting a draft complete in a short space of time and ended up feeling disappointed in myself. So I went away for a week determined to completely forget about essay's and uni work and placement and switch off (and managed it).

Our hut by the pond

I went down to Somerset for a few nights before smuggling my partner away for a few nights in a random wooden cabin in the middle of a small wooded area with nothing but tree's and a pond in sight. At this point I must remind you that I am only 29years old, and where many would see a heat-filled beach break or night of cocktails and dancing to switch off, this worked a treat for me. On arrival we were driven across a boggy field by the farmer (I got to sit on the back of the pick up in the rain on the way back and it made me feel like a very happy child!). We arrived at the cabin with mud splashes up and past our wellies and waterproofs but got to our little hut with a veranda to sit and watch the world go by and a single gas hob and woodburner inside. For those who need their mobiles-there was barely any signal and no electricity in the hut, so we relied on candle light and torches in the evenings. We lived off a pot of stew and they had built a toilet outside that required a 2minute walk through the wood...something I found difficult to adjust to at night when I heard the bushes rustling but not being able to see anything there (slight horror filmish!).

Anyway...he enjoyed it too and it was nice to just be so relaxed and not worry about anything other than topping up the burner with wood and when the candles would burn down. When we made it back to civilisation we continued the relaxation and had six hours of just reading a book (not one that was needed to be read for nursing either!) and catching the sunshine.

On the train back yesterday I did a little reflecting and felt a slow familiar panic rising that was the same sensation as I had felt last week when thinking about my university work. Hopeless. But then after a small consumption of caffeine and sugar I tried to figure out a new technique to get back into my writing...and this is what I tried this morning.

I figured that during my written exam a few weeks ago I wrote around 11pages of answers in the two hour period and realised if I can write that much under pressure, how could I sit in front of my laptop for 5days and write a few hundred words? So this morning I had Word open ready for 9pm and set my phone timer for 2hrs. During this time I had my phone on flight-mode and had all webpages closed excluding a link to a policy I needed for my project. I wasn't allowed to leave my desk for anything other than bathroom break and had a bottle of water at the desk. No distractions. And guess what? I managed around 600words. Success!

I realised then that if my head is not into a piece of work, assigning day after day to be sat in front of it will just feel like a life sentence with nothing greener on the other side. I also realise that I work less productively in the afternoons so rather than online shopping to pass the time like last week (can't afford it if I want to buy a car in summer!) then I could instead do things like this blog or little bits of research towards the project.

Odie says PMA!

So that is me for this week...still waiting for my exam results but to be fair they are allowed up to four weeks to mark our work before releasing grades and with one hundred or so students to mark with 5-15pages to mark for each person, they'll probably take the maximum time! So may have some news on that next week. I have my official start of placement next week starting on Tuesday so will be my final ever countdown...all of my work and placement will be complete in 12weeks time! 
 
 
Hope things are ok in your world!

Em x

PMA!