Year One

Lessons i learned as a nurse

It was in Florida I decided to be a nurse.  No idea why really, I'd never thought about it before and to be honest i wasn't very good with sick people!  It was hard to explain that to other nurses when they asked me why I'd decided to slog through three years of hard core training.  And believe me it was hard!

Year one

Oldham hospital

 

Lesson learnt: It isn't so much the location that's important.  'There's nothing queer as folk' wherever you go!

Getting used to staff was one thing.  The patients were a new challenge altogether.  People stick to their own roles very much in a hospital.  Doctors with other doctors, nurses with nurses, HCA's with HCA's etc.  As a student, you float somewhere in between.  Everyone is keen to share their knowledge with you but on the other hand, when it's brew time - expect to be volunteered repeatedly !(Advice - make a really crappy cuppa and they wont ask you so much) 

I don't recall much from my first year as a student.  It was too overwhelming and downright scary but i was getting better.  Very nice mentor's encouraged me daily.  Very , very slowly the prospect of answering the telephone or having to speak actual words to a doctor was becoming less terrifying!  

Memorable experience: Collecting an eye from a dead person

Exactly how it sounds.  Really groce but someone has to do it, right?  I just watched while the nurse carefully extracted the eyes.  When you realise that this procedure can help another person still living, its not really that horrible at all.  When you can understand that, nursing becomes a whole lot easier.  It's not about what you get out of it.  It's when you put into it what counts...