Nurse Training in the UK

I started my nurse training in 1997. It was fun! going to college getting paid, meeting new friends and above all learning all these exciting things about nursing.

Yes I had rose coloured glasses on!, visions of being like Carol Hathaway in ER and falling for a doctor, laughs!

So what happened in reality. Well I started working on the wards and first thing that hit me was the exhaustion, the aching legs, the dying on feet syndrome.

Cure tights that are like support stockings, flat decent shoes and lots of coffee or water.

It was May 97 and I was a new student on a surgical ward in a busy hospital.
I loved caring for patients and making them comfortable I really thought this was what nursing was all about you know.

I soon discovered that nursing is about keeping Sister happy, jumping high when she or Staff say so and doing things that they want to the detriment of your patient.

So if Sister wants you to make a bed, don't go talking to patients, or refreshing their water jars, or feeding them. Go make the bed!

When the doctors arrived, the Staff Nurses would get on the make up, primp their hair, fix their uniforms and flirt with the Doctors to the detriment of the patient.

I appreciate that there where many darn good nurses on this ward and they worked their backsides off but there where a heck of a lot of crying, moaning, lazy good for nothings.

God help the patient if their family complained about their treatment.
God help you if you did not fit the nurses genre for a sweet little patient, male patients that flirted got everything!

You would find me with the elderly, pale, frail, not long for this world patients, or the ones who where bordering on psychiatric care and thats where I would be.

I cared too much for my patients and zip for the system and zip for the lazy nurses who didn't give a toss about the patients.

My mentor! non-existent. That was just the first month of my training and back to college I went, realising that there was lot more to nursing than cooling fevered brows and caring for patients.

Sorry to all the decent nurses out there, but tough luck to those who where too lazy to get off their backsides and clean up some old man lying in excrement, or the poor guy who was in so much pain, you didn't care. There is more to patient care than darn computers you know.

To the nurse who cried, and the nurse who smiled and the nurse who was promoted for her devotion well done. To those who hated the job and run round like a headless chicken making my life a misery and other student nurses life a misery, go and get another job.