My First Placement

My first placement was an amazing beginning to nursing. Here is a wee bit of background. I was on a general medical/diabetes/cardiology/endocrinology ward with around 30 beds, but nurses work on a split basis, side 1 and side 2. The shifts were 12 1/2 hours and apart from 3 nights, all I did was days. The ward was well staffed, with several staff nurses, auxiliary nurses, a housekeeper and domestic staff. The ward itself was well kitted with an array of physiotherapy aids, blood pressure machines, a bladder scanner, ECG machines and a cardiac resuscitation trolley.


While on placement I met plenty of lovely, kind patients who were thankfully patient with me. The staff too were brilliant in "facilitating my learning". My jobs were to complete observations and fill out sews charts, lots of auxiliary work, taking people to the loo, helping with meals etc, fundamental care, sometimes checking blood pressures and filling out charts. I enjoyed every component of it, the fundamental care to the more intricate stuff like injections, venflons and catheters.

I shall leave you with a funny wee story of what went wrong when I took blood pressure!

Bit of a C**k up!

So, I was going round doing everyone's observations and I came to a male patient I had cared for a couple of days. This gentleman was lovely and was very easy to get along with. I was having the usual chat with him, how he was feeling, his gardening etc. I then put the cuff on and pressed the machine on, I continued to chat with him while the machine worked and I scribbled on charts. "Nurse??" :O and his hand was COATED in blood! I looked at it and I TORE the cuff of his arm. I had no idea what to do, but, thankfully there was a nurse in the room doing drugs, so she came over and put his arm in the air and asked me to go get stuff. I was shocked by this! What had happened, was, his venflon had come out and neither of us had realised. It was a rather big boo boo..... to say the least...