A drained soul
Night shifts this week: fine when you have at least 4 staff
on. Since it was my first nights, coworkers were really lovely and even gave me
a 2 hour break to sleep! Plus, the ward isn't too heavy atm besides one
challenging patient who pretty much needs 1-to-1 support. There's a lot of
cleaning in it, cleaning cammodes, obs machines, steady's but you can power
through that in an hour. Then there's the sitting around which is fine and
quite a bonding experience if you have other chilled staff on with you, but if
you don't have anyone to talk to, it is all too easy to fall asleep. (Which I
did at 4am this morning!)
Pros
- Basically a lot of sitting around then the ward is quiet
- Bond and have a laugh with other coworkers quite easily
- Take-outs
- A 2 hour nap
Cons
- Absolute hell when the ward is heavy
- You'll have far less staff than the day to cope, and often your doing all of the HCA duties on your own
- Dementia patients can really struggle and therefore a lot of your time is devoted to making sure they are safe
- Exhausting; not neccessarily the workload but having such a long shift at that sort of time drains your soul
- Having a night shift plays hell with your body clock and means you don't really get a day off despite the rota considering the morning you come off work, as a day off. Which it isnt, because the only thing your physically able to do is sleep.
- Having night shifts back to back is nearly impossible to cope with sensibly when you travel 2 hours each way
So there you have it. As I say, thankfully my experience
wasn't so bad this week, but I imagine I will have a much more horrid time of
it when there are staff on that don't let you have a break, or don't let you
drink tea on the ward.
Saying that, I have lost the will to live several times this
week. It is very easy to become disillusioned with applying to medicine in this
sort of job. I feel sorry for the F1's: they get shat on so badly by everyone
else above them, they're job on the face of it, is doing all the things the
chain of doctors above them (F2's, Regs, blah blah) don't want to do... and the
rest of the chain think it's hilarious. Gotta wait 4 hours for some results?
Get the F1 to do it and tell him just as he is about to walk out the door. Got
a mountain of paperwork? F1. Gotta reassure the patients what they're procedure
is? Get the F1.
The other thing that can really be off putting to applying for
medicine is seeing all the loop holes in the NHS. I can very easily see how
patients would be neglected. Hell I think the patients that need the most
support are the most likely to be neglected. It breaks me to see when other nurses
or hca's just aren't putting in the tiniest bit of effort to make a massive
difference to the patient.
Take Marie, she screams a lot. She is a lovely, cute,
war-fighting old lady, but boy - she knows how to scream. She screams about
everything, when she's frightened, when it's too bright in her room, when
someone walks by. Every other member of staff walks by and lets her scream,
since she is only going to start back up again. I figured out pretty early on
though that if you literally stick your head through her side-room door, and
say, "Hi Masie, you OK? There's nothing to be frightened of, it's just me
out here. Let me know if you need anything! Don't be scared, I will see you in
just a bit!" and that's it, she'll be fine for a bit. Sure, she'll start
again, but it takes 3 seconds to stick your head in and reassure her that
everything is fine. Why won't the other staff do that?
But there are obviously patients that no amount of
reassurance is good enough. What am I meant to feel when Ray at 3am is feeling
so uncomfortable and is so frustrated about it, that he grabs your neck with
all his might and squeezes as hard as he can, the minute you step into his
reach? Later he even asks me to show him how much he hurt me, and should he try
harder. That sort of stuff, amongst the rest of the verbal abuse makes me want
to quit. I soon stopped fooling myself that every patient was at the heart of
it was going to be a nice person. Some people are just cruel. It takes all my
strength to still find the will power to wash him, get him changed, and wipe
his poo and make him comfortable.
Sometimes, I have come home after times like that and just
cried. I'm doing the best I can but I feel like I'm crap at my job, and that
I'm making no real difference at all, and patients like Ray hate me because I
must be really unlikeable, and why oh why won't some of the other staff just
say hello to Marie and make her stay so much better all for the sake of a few
seconds?!
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