Day 171

I have had a few days off to spend with my family back where I'm from, also visiting some lovely nurses and auxiliaries I worked with when I was a health care assistant (the job that made me want to be a nurse). I forced myself to go into placement last night for my first night shift, and my first meeting my mentor, hoping that I would gain some sense of security knowing that I would have a familiar face from now on.

Try your best, H. Don't give up.

Notable event 1
I spent every second of every minute of all of the 10 hours I was working in a blind panic. I could not see straight for the anxiety. The first 3 hours were the worst. I mentioned I was very nervous, but I don't think those words hit home with anyone.

"You'll enjoy it"

"You'll get used to it"

Maybe I wasn't firm enough? Maybe I should have sobbed? I cried in the car park before I got out of the car, and nearly cried on more than 3 occasions while I was left with patients. I could feel the expression of pain and nervousness on my face, it had to have been obvious? My mentor is alright. I was hoping for someone bubbly and matronly, willing to teach and happy to keep me at her side. But they're busy. They're all so busy, even on the night shift.

Notable event 2
I worked solidly through until 3am without so much as a break. I drank a quick tea while completing forms. I didn't stop. Nothing stopped.  Buzzers and beeping machines went off all night long. Sometimes the nurses responded to the monitors when they bleeped, sometimes they didn't. I tried to sense a pattern of what was important but failed. In the end I ignored them all. I was already panicking that my patient is falling asleep. Or is it into some sort of coma? I don't know. I will 'make her comfortable' to see if she responds.

Everyone is ill. Everyone is ill. But they're not ill with the same thing. All the people in my bay have something different wrong with them. I am unfamiliar with bleeds, cardiac, COPD and anything medical. And they all have one of each and more. I read the nurses pack from front to back hoping it would give me the answers but none of it made any sense.

I would rather be at the dentist's
I would liken my experience to that of having a filling. You're in the dentists chair now, you can't move or just get up and leave, you have to endure it until the end. You have to put on your bravest face and do not crumble. 


The bit that crushes me is that once it is over, I have to come back tomorrow and do it all over again.

I like fillings because if anything, they are at least 5-6 years apart, or it may even be the last one.

You don't have to anything. But do this.....
I spent a good deal of the night stopping my hands from shaking, and allowing myself time to slow my breathing down. My heart raced all night long. It just felt like drowning.

"Don't worry, you're not expected to do anything, and if you need any help just ask".

And yet here I am taking observations and transferring patients whose mobility I have no clue about. Why all this guesswork? How do you turn around and say 'no'?

"I'm just nipping to the ward next door, are you okay to just stay with the patient for a little while" they will ask as they are halfway out the bay. They make it sound so simple, I'm a 2nd year student, I can't say 'no'. Well, if they're that confident all is well then they wouldn't leave right? Then they're gone 15 minutes, and the patients machine is going haywire, but is it the type of bleep the nurse would ignore again? I don't know. The sats are lower than they should be. Is that mask on right? I don't know anything about this bi-pap machine.....the whole reason the patient is on it is because they can't have too much oxygen. I don't know how to work it......but I'm not allowed to leave. I grab the nearest HCA who says it's all fine and silences the alarm.

I HATE IT HERE. I hate everyone and their blasé attitudes when I am quite literally shaking with nerves the whole time. 

I don't know what I am doing, and try to stop myself from choking with fear.


Notable event 3
At around 4.30am I finally get the chance to go through my uni checklist with my mentor. My goals are written down. I had scribbled them briefly before I came in, but I don't care really. I don't want to be here.

1. Familiarise myself with the drugs chart and become more accustomed to the drugs rounds.
(So I can stay in the treatment room as long as possible and take sanctuary away from all the beeping and panic-inducing patients)
2. Book myself onto courses so I can be more confident in clinical practices
(Preferably the all-day ones where I don't need to be on the ward, and also so I can at least have the same knowledge as the nurses I am working with, and not learn through osmosis, because that isn't fair)


My mentor makes me add on about 3 or 4 more objectives, none of which I am interested in, and when she suggested I aim to manage a few patients I clearly said 'no'.

"Maybe one or two then?"

"Perhaps one, but that may be unlikely....."

I have been working up to this moment all week - I'd have preferred to say this privately to my mentor but we haven't been alone to discuss anything once because it's been so busy, so the nurses station will have to do, even if there are people around....


"To be honest with you, I am terrified of this placement. I'm so anxious and it's quite affecting me--"

I was about to go on to suggest maybe I have another mentor for when she is off (since she's part time) as I think I could do with a little extra support, but she cuts me off.


"Really though, everyone finds it difficult. You'll actually really enjoy it in the end, you just need to get used to it, but you'll be fine honestly".

The bog-standard 'one-answer-fits-all'. I close my mouth and nod slowly. I so badly want to believe her words, but I have been fobbed off. I don't try to reiterate my point, how more direct can I be than with the words 'anxious' and 'terrified'? It has taken me a week to try and reach out to someone to tell them how I feel (how can they possibly know if I don't say anything), and it has just slipped by.

Notable event 4
I finish. I leave. I get into my car and it all comes flooding out. In the 15 minutes it take me to drive home, the tears do not stop once.

Big fat tears stream down my face and dribble miserably down onto my chest. I have not cried like this in years.