Day 4 Acute Placement - Frustrated Rant!

Just one more day of placement this week and then i'll have the whole weekend to relax and I cannot wait because I am so exhausted. Each day I've been waking up between 4:30 and 5:00am and walking to the station in freezing cold rainy darkness. Today I missed the express by 30 seconds and ended up being 10 minutes late which isn't good.

I've been learning a lot and am gaining confidence in the basic skills of communicating with the patient, taking observations (blood pressure, pulse, pain assessment and so on), giving out and researching the actions of lots and lots of oral drugs as per the orders and under supervision of my buddy nurses or my clinical teacher, doing wound dressings, writing progress notes in the patient files, and administering IV fluids and drugs through the port of the cannula which is already in place in the patient's vein.

I have been looking after the same room each day which has four patients in it. Three of them have been there all week, two older ladies and one 21 year old girl with leukemia, and have enjoyed getting to know them. I feel like I've developed a good rapport and they have all been really supportive and told me I am doing a great job. My philosophy is to be very warm and friendly, when they are in pain I offer my hand for them to squeeze and stroke their arm/leg/back and I try to be sympathetic. Whenever I walk past them I smile and ask 'do you need anything?' or 'how are you feeling?' I haven't been taught these approaches at uni or by the other nurses, I just do this according to the motto 'do unto others as you would want them to do unto you'. Also, I draw from my own experiences as a patient in various settings throughout my life and try to remember and imitate how the nice nurses/doctors I had were. At this stage I absolutely refuse to be one of those nurses that is really business like and cold, shows no affection and talks to the patient as if they have a low IQ. I've even seen fellow students doing that with the dummies at uni, as if that is how a nurse should act and I can't stand it. Receiving TLC, understanding and respect is a huge part of feeling better when you are in pain or feeling like crap.

Although I've been looking after the same patients, each day I have had a different nurse buddy. As I mentioned in my previous post on my first day my buddy was so nice. She was nice to me and nice to the patients. She gave one of them a hug when they were discharged. The second day I had what I call a 'mean nurse'. She was mean to me, very critical, no encouragement and had a cold bedside manner with the patients. She expressed her disapproval of the fact that I hadn't done first year and said I shouldn't have got any credit for my other degrees and life experience because they have got nothing to do with nursing. She also wasn't interested in finding out anything about me. On the third day my nurse buddy was a 'nice nurse'. She was in her grad year (first year out of uni) and was really understanding that this was my first placement and was really encouraging, saying things like 'I'm still learning new things everyday' and 'you're doing so well for someone on their first placement' and 'your background will really come in handy in your nursing career because you're used to communicating with people from different cultures and you have so much teaching experience' and so on. She gave me the chance to do the things I was confident doing independently and talked me through anything I wasn't totally confident in, even if I'm 'supposed to know it'.

Today unfortunately I had a 'mean nurse' buddy and this one really got to me. She was also a grad year nurse on her first rotation so only been a nurse for about 6 months, 22 years old, but she was so full of herself, acted and talked like a 50 year old matron, and criticised everything I did, even things the other nurses had shown me how to do, she said 'I don't do it that way' or 'that's not necessary'. Like my Tuesday buddy she also said it wasn't good that I had missed out on first year and when I told her what my background is she said in a patronising tone 'you obviously get bored very easily' and said 'teaching isn't a hard job at all'. I asked her 'have you been a teacher?' and she just snapped 'no but I know it's an easy job'. As the day went on she frustrated me more and more. I didn't like her bedside manner with the patients, she talked to them like they were children and shouted even though none of the patients are hard of hearing. I speak to them softly and have never had to repeat myself. When I was putting fresh sheets on a patient's bed because the sheets had gotten wet she said I hadn't done the hospital corners correctly, so I asked her to show me because that's one of the things I missed out on from first year. She did show me the correct way but while she was doing it she said 'this is the most basic skill of nursing that you should be able to do perfectly. you should be practising at home every day.' I told her that the reason I don't practise this at home is because I just have a doona, and she said: 'Well go out and buy a sheet. I've been doing hospital corners on my bed since I was FIVE YEARS OLD!' This was nearly the end of the day so I just said 'Good for you!' and walked out of the room and left her to finish making the bed by herself. I went and found my clinical teacher and told him that her attitude was really bothering me and I would like him to observe for the next half hour or so. When he was there helping she wasn't as much of a b*tch. I've only mentioned a couple of things here but she pretty much rubbed me the wrong way all day and by the end of the day I was feeling really upset. I'm sure being tired is a factor but it doesn't help being spoken to and treated like that, especially when I'm there to learn and practise, and she being such a junior herself. If she was a more senior nurse in age and experience maybe it wouldn't have bothered me as much. My clinical teacher was understanding but said it's something that I will have to learn to deal with because it is going to happen a lot throughout my uni placements and in my nursing career. Nevertheless I have requested not to be 'buddied up' with that nurse again. I hope I can work in the same room again tomorrow though as I really like the patients and I know they like me. Time to relax now, I'm going to watch Napoleon Dynamite (one of my favourite comedies) to cheer myself up and take my mind of things.