Pointless Ranting

Don’t ask me why I’m doing this. An absence of anything to bash on about I guess. So I thought I’d peruse the global news stands and link the interesting stuff back here. I’m such a martyr for the cause, I know.

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A little over a week, the great Doc Crippen pleasured us with this guest post.

Within the commentary of this discourse, I believe it was firmly and established that this offer of…

I will bet you all a virtual pint that more than 75% of newly qualified nurses are under 25.

…was irrefutably and evidentially proven to be in err by Gallowgate and seconded by Zarathustra with this:

Gallowgate said…

According to the now defunct NMAS (Nursing and Midwifery Admissions Service) website: In 2007, 15226 of accepted applicants were 25 and under and 10260 were 26 and over.

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Step 1: The Easy Introduction

You may want to join a well known new religious movement. By new religious movement I mean cult. Then you will be told what to think and how to argue very badly. You will also probably become very poor very rapidly.

There you go, you have nothing to lose but your mind itself the one step plan to becoming an antipsychiatrist.

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As everyone else is presenting the serious stuff…  I thought I’d bring you this.

He thought it was a titillating idea. In an effort to make his calf tattoo of a buxom cowgirl more shapely, Lane Jensen gave the tattoo silicone breast implants. But after two weeks, the Edmonton tattoo artist’s body rejected them 

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This week I started on my first community placement. I am in a team that covers primary under 65’s, severe and enduring and over 65’s.

I will be spending time with 3 different CPN’s based in the same office. I will mainly be with the primary under 65 however.

Having gained almost all of my knowledge about CPN’s from this site (ha), I was expecting even better treatment that I have previously had in ward based placements, the truth, however, was not comparable.

In the entire week I have been there……prepare yourself, the following story is not nice.

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When I trained as a nurse, I recall the ongoing debate of the ‘theory/practice gap’. In the advent of the Health & Safety turbo-charged steamroller (recently convereted here to run on “Duty of Care” fuel), over the last 20 years or so, I would like to declare the “panic/common-sense gap” our new clear winner.I know I’m not the first to post on this topic, and surely am not the only one to have noticed or take issue with this. However, I am interested in the international perspective on this and will state from the outset, I’ve never seen in-patient healthcare quite so bad as I have where I am for being a Nanny State & Big Brother combined.

Health & Safety will hereafter be referred to as H&S (or UB, for “utter bollox”, depending on context and my mood).  Read the rest of this entry »

Our unit is going through change. We’ve changed the nursing model, revamped the clinical interventions programme and have even changed the roster system to incorporate 10 hour nights to facilitate more staff in the day.

For the most part, this has been well received and  has resulted in major positive advancements in terms of nurse/patient interactions and facilitating events such as community leave better than ever before.

However, now the night staff start at 9pm instead of 11pm and some staff are having a problem with working out who should give out the Milo……

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Ever turned up for work and there on the desk, in a space all of its own is a ‘thing’?

It could be a piece of torn clothing, or a broken CD player, but it’s sitting there.. ready… intriguing…. just waiting… for a story to be told…

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Dear Zarathustra

You snivelling little worm. So you went and finished your nursing studies, did you? Well, you may have spent the last three years trying to live off £6000 a year, and as a result be about £8000 in debt, and you may be still waiting for your first month’s pay, but we’re still going to have our wicked way with you.

We want £76 off you. Just for the right to be able to call yourself “nurse”. Yep, 76 quid. Just make the cheque out to “My New Overlords and Masters, The Nursing and Midwifery Council”. While we’re at it, can you also bend over and drop your trousers so we can get some “executive relief” in your cornhole?

Yours Sincerely

The Nursing and Midwifery Council

PS You are now our bitch. And you will be forever. Well, at least until we decide to strike you off.

As you are all very well aware, the whole of the United Kingdom now has a ban on Smoking in public places. (Finally, England caught up with the other countries)

This has caused endless discussion and debate about exceptions, if any, to the rules.

This post, however, is not about that. I am hoping this is not too much of a rant, but has a point to it.

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Maria needs help. Remember that.

So after a few weeks of Crisis In The Community she turns up in the police cells after shouting and screaming in the street. Just boyfriend trouble but it spilled out and the neighbours got involved and there’s a touch of arson and a bit of self harm….anyway upshot is, she’s in the cells and then gets assessed and ends up voluntarily on the ward. Boyfriend wants nothing to do with her now. Its over, he’s had enough. Remember that.

Maria makes friends quite quickly on the ward. This makes staff suspicious. Read the rest of this entry »

[Image deleted due to server load - was an image of a hunky half naked man - Mental]
Your physiotherapist will be with you shortly

Ward round on the psych ward. The various members of the multi-disciplinary team are filing in. Professor Whiggy the Consultant Whychiatrist. Bright Eyes the Eager-to-Please SHO. Zarathustra the Devilishly Handsome Stoodent Mental Nurse…

In strolls the physiotherapist. He has brought a student physiotherapist with him…

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I went on holiday once to a lovely little English town. It had lots and lots of bookshops and was chock full of the oddest people I have ever met. To put this in context this is when I was working on a very very busy acute admissions ward.

I was sitting in a coffee shop trying not to drool on my purchases when I heard a conversation:

Person: Oh yes, Mildred, my daughter, was not very well at all.

Other person: Did you try the fairy dust then ?

Person: Oh yes, I sprinkled some on her, it fixed her right up. She was fine after a few days.

Other person: Yeh, it’s really good stuff. Well worth the money.

One of the people had just served me my drink. I took a very close look for some powdery residue. Though looking back at this conversation I could have been hearing some encoded conversation to do with a drugs deal ? My feeling is though they were actually talking about Fairy Dust.

Is Fairy Dust made out of ground up fairy folk or made by them ?

Many clients feel they can mysteriously affect events at a distance. Often involving rays, or energies or waves or something. Often this results in them being offered a little something extra in the medicine pot.

Nurses can have the same idea.

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Nurses these days are rubbish. Over-educated, too-posh-to-wash, too-clever-to-care, sociology-spouting ponces who are too busy thinking about a particularly witty deconstruction of Kafka to roll up their sleeves and do some actual nursing.

I know this because I’ve been told this repeatedly, usually by nurses close to retirement. They’ve alway been keen to tell me that all this university book-learning is politically-correct nonsense. Nurses don’t need to be educated. They just need to know how to nurse.

I have to say though, I’ve always been of the opinion that they were talking bollocks. I had a BA and an MA before I even started on the nursing degree, and it hasn’t stopped me from getting my hands dirty. Yes, nurses need to know how to give practical care at the bedside, but they also need critical thinking skills, and the only way to get that is at university. Without that ability to not just do things but to think about why you’re doing it, you get dullard, unimaginative nurses who follow bizarre rituals and inflexible hierarchies.

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Time to whack up a post. This is avoidance of paperwork, since I resent having to do it at home during my “own time”.

Service users are time-wasters. They want to be in hospital, are happy to be dependent on professional carers and are ready, willing and eager to become institutionalised as soon as they fall into our grasping hands.

Sound familiar to anyone out there?

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