Let the good times roll...

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences" - Audre Lorde

I have to agree with Audre Lorde's words, though I wouldn't break out the Dom Perignon just yet. I've done my first two weeks of the internship, and I live to tell about it.

My first day was scary as hell (initially I wanted to insert a curse word, but since I know that my mom is reading this, I won't!). It was just a couple of minutes to 7 am, when I entered the staff room, dressed in my extremely and almost permanently dazzling white shirt and navy blue trousers (yeah, I'm practically a Brit now). There were three other people in the room with me, by the looks of it, two of them were healthcare assistants and the third one was a nurse, a male nurse to boot. Nobody said anything to me, not even responed to my "good morning", which I had belted out, when I entered. It was almost like they didn't acknowledge my presence, so safe to say, I was pretty much ignored for a half hour or so. Then one female nurse turned her attention to me and literally asked me, who I belonged to?! Hm, had I looked like a stray dog? Well, I got the opportunity to select my own master, so I just settled with the one, who'd just semi-insulted me. She is now my mentor or pet owner, which ever floats either of our boats. She is -despite the oh-so bad first impression- actually very nice and so fabulously Scottish...

I need to get back on track, back to the quote. So there are a lot of differences in the approaches to nursing. Let's start with the settings, my ward consists of three bays, which have room for six patients (it's kind of lying, when I say "have room for", because the truth is, there's not much room. Let me just say that if my junk in the trunk was any bigger, I'd get stuck a lot!) There's one side room, which is preferably reserved for isolated patients due to infections. Then there's a desk in the middle of the ward, where there are two computers (they have definitely seen better days!) and to your right you find a table attached to  sink, a tiny refrigerator and a drug cupboard (psssh! It's here all the good stuff is stored!), to your left are all the patient journals. It looks like something from another century, which all makes sense, because apparently the digital age hasn't reached the English hospital wards yet, since EVERYTHING is written by hand. Your first thought must be - "crapola, that's a lot of work", and you wouldn't be wrong, most times the writing isn't illegible, heck I reckon Sanscript is easier to decipher! So at times I have to decline to give drugs to some patients, because I simply cannot read the bloody drug chart! 

This prompt me to tell my mentor about our system and handling of drugs, she didn't seem that impressed by it, almost like she couldn't be bothered, but she did tell me that the reason, they didn't use computers for this, was that it was too expensive! Wow! Too expensive...at the expense of what could be a patient's life!

So everything is basically cramped up as much as possible. The bays are identical, each patient has a bed, a night stand, where the medicine is kept (I know, awful, eh?), a chair and a tiny TV, and to top it of, they also have their own curtain, so they can have some privacy. Needless to say that you cannot achieve much privacy behind a curtain, everything you're told by the doctor on rounds is heard by five other patients, sometimes relatives, nurses and students - way to uphold the patient/doctor confidentiality! 

All in all, they way they handle the medicine and drugs is just an accident waiting to happen...

...a story from real life...

I was to inject a patient with Clexane in the abdomen, I asked for an alcohol swab to clear of the injection spot, to which the nurse replied, that they didn't do that anymore. Incredulously I sighed and said that I had been taught to do that before doing anything that involved needles, she said that she was taught the same procedure, but it wasn't practiced like that anymore. I reluctantly injected the patient with Clexane and told the nurse that next time I will be using the alcohol swabs.

So it's safe to say that I do recognize the differences, however, I'm finding it difficult to accept these differences, and I'm not sure that I'll end up accepting them, but I'll try. I do know, that if I end up breaking out the Dom Perignon, it would be for completely other reasons than celebrating those differences!

-xoxo-