Not So Sure

This blog might be a little dry for my non-medical friends!

I have worked 2 shifts now at the local private hospital.  First thing I must say is that my feet have had it good until now!  Standing and walking on concrete for 8 hours is a form of torture to my feet and it usually peaks after 5 hours or so. I did buy extra insoles for my "Hush Puppy" shoes, but clearly I need to go and buy new shoes.  Let's see, the work........ hmmmm..   hmmmm...... it is not what I had in mind exactly.  I did not really know what to expect, but as an RN I envisioned I would have NAs and LPNs (AINs and EENs in OZ)  to help with the patients and to take care of the bedpans, urinals, transfers, bed baths, etc.  As it turns out, that is not exactly the case.

I have NO experience working on a "ward" or a "floor" in a hospital (only emergency), so I am trying to stay open to learning new things. The work on the medical ward can include the 5 palliative care beds if that is your end of the hall to cover.  For my first shift I was assigned 8 elderly medical patients.  Some of these patients had been here for many weeks either waiting for a nursing home bed or if they are a veteran or spouse of a vet, they can stay until they die or get better. No hospital criteria to meet.  I basically had to do the total patient care, including medications, getting ready for bed, answering the call lights, handing out bed pans, urinals and collecting them! (I must confess a nurses' aide did come in for 4 hours and help everyone on the floor get the patients ready for dinner and ready for bed, but there was only so much one person could do.)

They do have some interesting equipment here, I think it is from the 1950s.  Not much is disposable, for example the bedpans and urinals are made from very thick plastic and once "used", are taken into the dirty utility room and put in this machine (WITH all of the donated bodily contents). You then push the START button and magically the bedpan or urinal (aka "bottle" here) is transformed in to a sterile unit that is then handed out to the next needy soul (there is a separate machine for the wash basins). This system is nice (is that the right word?) to not have to empty the pee and poo into the toilet and then try to rinse out the disposable unit to give back to the same patient (at least this is what I think happens in the USA).

Let's see, back to the 8 patients and my first day of work......  I was briefly oriented by another RN, who by the way, is from California and had the same "yank drawl" as me! There are a few things that really slowed down the dispensing of medications. Here are a few: narcotics here have to be signed out by two nurses and both nurses must witness the patient swallowing the drug, and any injectable antibiotic and all anticoagulants must be double checked by a second nurse as well. So I was frequently being called out of trying to establish my own medication routine to assist the other nurses and vice-versa (not to mention all of the call lights going  off).

After a few hours at work I was told by the other nurse that I should go to "tea". Well, I said, "OK"! Then I realized I did not know exactly what she meant by "tea". Was I supposed to take a 10-minute coffee break or was I supposed to go to dinner?  I had to ask the charge nurse what she meant by tea. Tea here is a dinner break and a cuppa is a cup of tea or coffee.

I did meet some lovely elderly patients who asked frequently about "where I was from". At times we struggled with the accent differences.... I wasn't sure whether a patient was asking for a "pan" or something for "pain". :)  That made for a good laugh for both of us.

My next shift on sunday evening was more of the same, a different patient load, but I got into more of a routine.  Somehow I am not really looking forward to my future shifts (now about 3-4 days a week) of floor nursing, I know once I get there I will put my heart and soul into taking care of the patients, but I must say it is not my "cuppa", but it will work for now as long as my feet can keep on keeping on.