By now i just about knew what i was doing - or at least i thought i did!
Place - Intermediate Care - Oldham community
I had requested A and E, wanting a more dynamic experience of acute medicine. What i got was another community placement with no relevance to me whatsoever. I had no intention of working as a community nurse and the experience i gained was not the most helpful - though that's not to say it wasnt interesting!
Interesting Experience: A missing toe
It's pretty self explanatory though quite a shock for a student. District nurses have to be prepared for all kinds of things. We went to a house to see a man with a healing foot. It was healing from a recent amputation of his middle toe. What was left was a gaping hole that extended right from where the toe should have been through to the top of his foot. It was my job to poke a metal stick through the hole whilst guiding a special dressing into it. We referred to it as packing the wound and thats exactly what it was! Luckily (that's debatable) the man couldnt feel a thing because of complications from diabetes!
Lesson Learnt:
Some people feign illness for attention and you might think this would drive a nurse crazy (and it does a lot of them). Feigned illness is usually very easy to spot to the trained eye, though it's usually covering up something not so obvious. Some people just don't know how else to ask for help. The danger is that one day a person with a real problem might come to you and you think you know they are faking it when actually they are not!
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