Student Nurse Blog Week 3

September 13th 2004

Well everyone, I made it through the first week at Uni! The first day was mainly a registration day. We all turned up to the lecture theatre at or around 915am for a 930am start. I arrived dead on 9am and had befriended a couple of people by 920am. In the morning it was mainly a registration period, filling out lots of paperwork and forms, to register on the course. Then after that we had two quizzes to do. The first involved going around the campus in groups, trying to find various places such as various offices, the medical centre, the library, the computer building, etc. and to write down certain letters that were displayed next to the areas we had to find. It was quite a good and fun way of finding our way around the uni. The next part of the quiz involved finding the name of someone who had been to Spain that summer, or who drove a red car, or who had 4 children, etc. Again, a great way of ice breaking and making new friends. In the afternoon we had to complete the registration forms for the NMC, followed by a talk from lots of different people about things such as student support, the sports centre, etc..

On the Tuesday morning we gathered together on one of the sports fields for a group photograph, before going into the drama studio. When in the drama studio we had varous ’ice breaking’ and ’getting to know each other better’ games and tasks to do, which was quite fun, so long as you didn’t mind acting like you were back at school again. We were able to make even more friends within the intake. In fact, by the late morning on Monday I had the mobile phone numbers for four of the girls I had met that morning - so my social support group was rapidly growing from the start. After the morning coffee break we had a talk on unison, before some of us joined up - myself being one. After lunch we had a brief introduction on the uni website and the IT and media services available. The afternoon finished with a brief introduction on what to expect from, and how to prepare for, our placements. This was given by a couple of the Clinical Facilitators..

On the Wednesday morning we were back in a lecture theatre and were given a talk from two librarians on the services provided by both the University library and the NHS hospital libraries. Then we had a brief ’self tour’ of the library. I tried out my username and password during this self tour and was able to log on first time - to my delight. (However, when I tried it in the late afternoon, when we had finished, I was unable to log on- Disaster!!).
After lunch we had a brief talk on occupational health. Then anyone who had received a letter from them had to go and see them - unfortunately, this appeared to be half of the intake. This was apparently unusual, and so totally messed up the late afternoon session, which was a brief talk from our personal tutors. This was rescheduled. Thus anyone who didn’t have to see occupational health - myself being one of the lucky ones - could go early. That’s when I discovered I could no longer log onto the uni computers - a glitch in the system.


Thursday was our first IT training day - the week just seemed to get more boring!! We were supposed to do one workbook (similar to the ECDL module on Word processing and file management) on the Thursday and then the second workbook (similar to the ECDL module on the Internet and email) on the Friday. However, once most of us had managed to log on, we had finished the first workbook within an hour. 80% of us had completed the second workbook by 215pm and were allowed to go home.
On the Friday you didn’t have to come in unless you wanted to get more practice with IT - for those who hadn’t used computers much. I came in late Friday morning to check my emails, apply for my Athens password, register with the library and to register my Student Union card online. I had a quick look through the university website, just to get a little familiar with it, before going into the city to sort out a little bit of shopping.

I have to admit that the first week was not totally what i expected. I realise that nursing courses do have a large amount of mature students, and that there is a need to get everyone familiar with the uni and certain important information. However, I did expect to do some nursing or medicine related things near the end of the first week. Not so. However, we did start to touch on nursing the first day back for the second week.

On the first week you do receive an incredible amount of information, where you have to take in a lot of details. However, you are given hand books and guides on a lot of the information. It was very supportive during the week and all the lecturers and tutors were on hand to answer any questions and try to allay any fears we may have had.

I have totally loved every minute of it so far, and have made a lot of great new friends. If the course continues like it has I will really love it.
Matt.

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