Nurse P's top 10 tips of being a nursing student!

So, it's occurred to me that the majority of you reading that will either be prospective student nurses or current nurses. So I thought I ought to do some kind of top 10 run down of tips since I'm almost at the end of my first year.

10 
There are no stupid questions.

This one's not just for nursing, pretty much anyone can benefit from this one. But in nursing, for that is what I know,  it is particularly important. Firstly in lectures, you're going to learn a lot of stuff ... or rather you're going to be told a lot of stuff that you're going to be expected to remember, and asking questions - helping you to understand the wider picture of the patient, the condition and the body. And when you're on placement ask questions, I don't mean be pestering and pulling on your mentors sleeves, but ask what condition a patient has then you can research it, ask the physio what it is they're doing, ask where things are because there will come the day when a doctor grabs you at the nurses station and says "Can you bring three blue cannulas to side room 8 please?" and you're going to have to fetch some and know where they are. Same goes for asking how something works, when your mentor asks you to set a litre of water to run through it helps if you're not staring at the machine like this!

9
It might feel like it's all hopeless - but it's better than you think.

Oh my God, it's not going in and, I'm going to be shit at this and OH MY GOD I DON'T UNDERSTAND! I'm prepared to put good money on every-one of you reading this will either have thought that at one point in the course or will do at one point or another. Yeah - we all have, I have, I will again, it's going to happen - live with it! Try not to feel as if it's all entirely hopeless, things, in my experience, tend to come together in time. Sometimes that thing that seemed like double Dutch to you in that lecture, suddenly makes sense once you attend the relevant seminar, or once you have another lecture a fortnight later that pieces the pieces together or even once you're on placement and you see that thing that makes no sense to you, in the flesh and suddenly you get it!
And there is no better feeling than something going wrong on the ward and going onto automatic pilot and knowing exactly what to do and sorting it. And I found that I knew exactly what to do once, just because the stuff that had been taught in lectures has seeped in and stuck without me even knowing and I was very proud of myself.

8. 
Buy a stethoscope. 

They are like gold dust, if you get asked to do the obs on your bay, and you can't find a stethoscope - you're screwed, so buy one and make it bright! Because when someone tries to steal it and spends the rest of your shift wandering around with it around their neck, it helps if you can spot it. I recommend Littmann stethoscopes - they are ace, genuinely the best ones you can buy, not cheap but like wine and shoes good things rarely are!

7.
Be positive.

Yeah a confused patient just tried to hit you as you were wiping their bum, yeah you're 10 hours into a 12 hour shift, yeah you're tired and hot and your feet hurt. But try to be positive, some days are going to be shit and some are going to be amazing, some will make you want to cry and some will make you want to sing with joy. But no-one, especially not the patients are going to benefit from you hating everything. Off load onto other student nurses when you get home, with a glass of wine and last nights Corrie, but the time when you're at work is the time to extenuate the positives. You might forget about that patients you looked after for 3 days 2 years ago, but chances are they wont forget you, and the aim of the game is for them to remember you as that cracking nurse who was really helpful and supportive, as opposed to that miserable bitch who walked around with a face like a slapped arse. Take your break alone, outside and let your armour fall with a cup of tea, a packet of crisps or a cigarette (whichever floats your boat - or all three!) and recover if needs be, but your patients need you to be strong, so try to be.

6.
You're not a normal student - so don't try to be.

You're at a uni - with many students attending it, and chances are you will bump into them, live with them, end up being filmed by them for course work, have sex with them or maybe even marry them! But the time will come when you realise that you're not like them,  they're different! Because all those stereotypes about binge drinking during the week, lie-ins and missing lectures are possible for them.

• Nurses have long years, a normal student will usually finish in or before June, and return late September or October. A nursing student will finish in the middle of August and start back at the beginning of September. And forget a 4-6 week Christmas and Easter, it's two weeks for us.

• Whereas a normal student will often have a 2 or 3 day week, a nursing student will have a 4-5 day working week in lectures, not to mention those pesky periods on placement with 5:30 starts.

• Due to some very specific training from the NMC guidelines, you can't really miss lectures, you'll have to sign a register and if you don't turn up then it's bye bye! 

I'm not saying that being a nurse is dull, or boring or anything even vaguely like that, I mean what other course means you spend your lunchtime laughing about catheters!? But if your flatmates are going out on the lash on a Tuesday night while you have 9am lectures the next morning, suck it up, swig some Horlicks and settle down to watch tele. You can still go out an have fun, trust me - I've drunk enough to feel a bull on occasion, but just remember that while you're both here to get degrees yours is a professional qualification and as a result you get to have a lot less mid-week fun. On the plus side you will quickly become the human equivalent of Eastenders Wiki page!

5.
Stop trying to look sexy - it's not going to work!

This isn't a vendetta against fake eyelashes or anything don't worry, I love my falsies for a night out! But in your uniform, when on placement,

don't think you're going to look like her, because you wont, I mean for a start the tunics make you look like a Moomin, the trousers make you like like your applying for a Simon Cowell look-a-like competition and those shoes ... well, if I say lesbian police-woman then you get the idea! But you know what, that ugly tunic and those trousers that come up weirdly high are actually really comfy, don't flash your arse when you bend over a patient and are loose enough so that you can bend and stretch. (The also have massive pockets that are great for stashing stuff in!) Those shoes are ugly as hell and as comfy and supportive as though you were standing on cherubs covered in silk wrapped feathers. It's the girls who come in with freshly curled hair, eyelashes that could knock out Joe Calzaghe they've got so much mascara on who start to slide down the warm sweaty slope first, you might not look sexy - but if you look no wors 12 hours after you started the shift than you did than when you started - then go and give yourself a pat on the back!

4.
Don't fall at the first hurdle.

What's this? You've failed an exam? Well - I'd give up now if I were you.

Yeah - not really - don't fall at the first hurdle, we all fail exams and think "OK, so this isn't for me, I'm off home." have a good cry, drink a lot of wine or eat a lot of cake, shout, rage, dance on your own with your ipod in but don't give up. Or at least not because you've failed an exam, if you come to realise that the course  and the occupation isn't for you then maybe you should re-think your options. But we all fail at least once and it's hard and soul crushing and we all wonder about dropping out. But remember why you started all this,   if you fail more than once and have to take a year out then that might be the time to consider your options, but until then - don't start to apply for the temp work just yet eh.
(For the record this also applies to placements, you might get a shit one where the nurses hate you, the patients hate you and you just want to curl up into a ball and weep, but for each shit one you're pretty much guaranteed 2 good placements. And while you're loving your next one - that annoying friend who loved their last one will be crying into the pillow because they hate this one!)

3.
Be appropriate.

I add this one with caution, because appropriate is a kind of a how long is a piece of string thing. What everyone thinks is appropriate is different, I mean I have no issue when doctors and nurses pop out for a fag break, but some other people do. However some things are probably universally thought of as inappropriate:
(these are all things that student nurses I know have done)

• Telling patients how shit faced you got last night/will get tonight.
• Telling lecturers how you used to be into drugs but you're "not in that scene any more"
• Telling people loudly in the staff room how much you hate Matron or Sister, hate them if you like but keep it schtum!

2.
It's poo - get over it! 

This one seems obvious for nurses, but you'd be surprised about how many people struggle with this, everyone has something that makes them retch and want to vomit, be it blood, poo, urine, fluid from a stoma bag, sputum, pressure sores ect. (For the record mine's sputum - cleaning out a trachy tube makes me want to do exorcist style vomiting.) But in the nicest possible way you need to deal with this and get on with it, it'll still disgust you and you'll still shudder but it needs doing, your patient needs you help them as best as you can - so you need to the job in hand. My top tips for getting through are:

• Grin, this helps stop the gag reflex - you'll look a bit manic and insane grinning wildly but hey, go for it it's worth it for not retching over a patient's face!
• NEVER NEVER NEVER inhale through your nose, I made this mistake once ... never never never again.

1.
Remember to laugh.

This is actually me - I'm really hairy when I don't shave.

You are on your way to having some of the best times of your life, some of the funniest incidents will happen to you when you're on the wards, you'll see the most bizarre things, have the oddest things said to you. And the best way of coping with all the bad stuff, the heartbreaking, the painful and the soul destroying is to look at the great, funny and bizarre stuff and to laugh, laugh on your own, laugh with the doctors, laugh with the nurses, laugh with fellow students and laugh with all your mates who are already concerned about your sanity, and will be even more so now!

So I hope that my 10 tops tips and advice for prospective and newly starting student nurses have been of some assistance, please do tell me in the comments section if there's anything you feel I've missed out!