Student Nurse Blog Week 14

November 24th 2004

Hello everyone, Thursday went really well on the community placement. I arrived at the school at around 9am and was taken over to the school hall where I met six school nurses, all setting up the tables ready for the Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio injections. I was able to watch the whole process, from clerking in the school children and checking the consent forms, to watching them get their injections to the recovery period. It was great; we had around 150 children to do! All the children (all year 10, with some year 11) were really well behaved - although a couple of the lads tried to tease some of the other children. We had three that were petrified of needles, but did really well and went ahead with the injections. We only had one (near the end) who felt really faint and had to lie down on the crash mat with her legs elevated. In the end the ’school matron’ had to come over from ’sick bay’ to look after the child.

The Friday was just as good. I went along to a care group for children between 2-5yrs who had been referred to the group by Health visitors, GPs, or social workers, due to their behavioural problems. It was really interesting to see how these children were engaged in certain activities and how they acted in certain situations. I did think it was sad how some dysfunctional family environments and settings can affect children in such a negative or debilitating way.

I had the weekend off and actually went back to Somerset to visit a couple of friends.

On the Monday I had another community placement at a health centre in Malvern. Here I sat in with a speech and language therapist who worked with children of various ages who had speech or language developmental problems. I saw a total of five children aged between three years up to nine years of age. It was very interesting to see the sort of problems these children could experience and the sort of therapy that could be used to rectify (or attempt to improve) these conditions.

Yesterday I spent the day with one of the advanced nurse practitioners. The day started at 830am with a handover in the ITU meeting room from the night on-call medical staff. The Nurse Practitioner also acts as a member of the crash team. Then we went round to see that teams that the medical team the nurse practitioner (NP) worked with on the other wards. From there we then went on to meet with the doctors on the base ward (my placement ward) to discuss the outliers and bring the medics up to date. The NP then received a crash bleep, but we didn’t go because it was on MAU and the NP told me that there were plenty of doctors and staff around that area to deal with it. From there we arrange a couple of tests and investigations for these patients, before going on to do the ward rounds with the doctors. Near the end of the ward rounds, the NPs crash bleep went off again, but again we didn’t go because it was in ITU and there were plenty of doctors and staff around that area to deal with it. Then we went round to the outliers again, to see if we could speed up some of the tests and investigations. Some of the tests that the NP had ordered (MRI, EEG, etc) would hopefully mean that two of the patients’ could go home that day if the all-clear was received. We then got another crash bleep for a trauma orthopaedic ward. This time we did go, and had to run very fast to the other side of the hospital. By the time we got there, there were already three doctors from the crash team, plus two of the ward nurses and the crash trolley. The resus effort seemed to be going well. I went with the NP who went to get the patients blood results, and then we brought them back to the crash team. The patient started breathing again, so we left the remainder of the crash team and went back to the base ward. On the ward we met up with two of the doctors and discussed an action plan for one of the patient’s. Then we went to lunch (around 130pm). After lunch we went round to a couple of outliers and chased up results. The NP was then able to discharge one outlier patient and one base ward patient. Then there was another crash bleep for a elective orthopaedic ward. Again we both ran to the other side of the hospital very quickly, where the remainder of the crash team had just arrived and started the resus attempt. Fluids were put up and adrenaline injected. Unfortunately, after 15 minutes the attempt seemed to be unsuccessful, so the leading doctor called the time of death. The worst thing was when one of the other doctors came back near the end, he had phoned the next of kin to call them into the hospital. Unfortunately the patient had been the next of kin (his wife’s) main carer, and she couldn’t drive and couldn’t get into the hospital until a friend could bring her in later. How sad, things like that really make you think about the full impact a patient’s death can have on their partner’s life.

Today was the start of university again (but only for a week and a half). We had portfolio this morning and then PBL this afternoon, but were ahead of schedule so finished early. Tomorrow I am back in uni, but have no idea what I’ve got.

I will update the blog again on Friday (or over the weekend some time). Hope you have enjoyed my reports so far. I welcome any feedback or comments. Till the next time Matt.




Well folks, the second half of this week we ended up back in University again. Yesterday we had a session in the morning on various scenarios from nurses in real life and how their actions caused their practice to be brought into question. In the afternoon we had a lecture on Health of the Nation and Health Inequalities, which wasn’t too bad.

This morning we had a lecture with two of the Foundation tutors to discuss any problems we had experienced so far on placement. Then we had an exercise (similar to our next Case Study assignment) where we had to pick a patient scenario out of a choice of four and come up with two nursing problems for the medical problem, plus a plan of care and also a plan on our holistic approach to the patient and their condition, any specialist referrals we would make and finally any lifestyle advice we would give. It was quite good in a way, as it got us thinking along the lines of our case studies.

In the afternoon we had another PBL session in our smaller classes. We have one more session on Wednesday morning to prepare and then have to present on Wednesday afternoon.

This evening I will have a fairly relaxed time. I will do some study and revision tomorrow and have a day off on Sunday. I also am going to give blood on Sunday - for the very first time. Years ago my parents told me that when I was born I had yellow jaundice and that meant there were restrictions around me being able to give blood. But a month ago I asked some nurses from the National Blood Service and they said that things had changed and that I was now able to give blood.

I hope everyone has a very good weekend and gets very drunk at some point over the next two days!!!! Today I did a bit of Christmas shopping, so must get drunk to recover from the shock!!.

Til the next time Matt

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