Student nurse placement haul!

This is going to be my run down of all the stuff that in my opinion are "must haves" for the student nurse on placement and quite a few are things that I hadn't thought off before I started so hopefully this'll help you too!

• Your Uniform
  
  Might seem a little obvious, but you'd be surprised how long it takes for your uniform to arrive from your universities uniform supplier. It took me several months, and I actually had to use a non university-logoed tunic for my first placement because it was taking them so long to get the logoed ones sent out. So be prepared! You can also get a rebate on the cost of your uniform from the uni, but remember to get your application in before the deadline ... unlike me!
• ID + holder
  
  Depending on your university and depending on the trust you are training will affect the type of ID you
  
  need. For example my trust wanted us to use our normal uni ID for hospital ID, whereas other student nurses with other trusts needed them to get a special Trust ID for student nurses. Any induction days at your trust should tell you about this, but make sure you have what you need. And make sure you have a durable ID holder: some hospitals don't let you use lanyards, and some are fastened with clips kind of like a clothes peg which I don't like because I found it dragged my tunic pocket and annoyed me. There's a kind called a lever clip which I prefer because I found it kept my ID flat against my hip. Similarly if your ID is a hospital ID which opens doors to department and wards then you might want it kept on an extendible ID holder so you don't have to take it off your uniform to use it on doors.
• Pens!
  If you ever want to know how a smoker feels when trying to find a cigarette at 3am then try not having a pen for 5 minutes on the ward. There's a desperation that takes you over as you hunt and hunt and hunt and no-one else seems to be lurking about with a spare pen. So always have a pen in your tunic, and if you want my advice, then always keep a spare in your bag so that that morning when you over sleep and forget a pen - the it's not the end of the world!
• A good quality stain remover
  Your uniform WILL get grotty, and grubby and manky. From general dirt, medication spills or in my

  

  The night shift where my pen
  decided to explode!

  case biro ink! You kind of want to look as presentable as possible for most of the time, so I would recommend investing in some good stain remover. Especially since your uniform will most likely be white, bleach is also pretty good, but it's more or a high maintenance cleaning method as it's a kind of keep an eye on your washing kind of method!
• Lunch box and water bottleYou might be buying lunch at the hospital or you might be bringing a packed lunch, either way I'd recommend having a Tupperware box and a water bottle. Many housekeepers run very strict staff fridges, mine wasn't alowed to hold plastic carrier bags which is why even if I was buying a sandwich from the shop I would shove it in a tupperwear box, you may also find that your houskeeper on the ward requires you to put your name and todays date on your luch - and that's just easiser with tupperwear! Some people are a bit funny about drinking tap water so there are some really funky water bottles you can buy with a kind of built in water filter in the cap. I have never used one so I can't really recommend it, but I know loads
  
  of people in yoga use them and love them so ...
• Jewellery retainersThis one's quite a specific one! But for those of you with any piercings that are facial then you might want to invest in a piercing retainer. If you haven't seen them they're flesh coloured studs that make your piercing almost invisible and because they're flexible they're really safe.
  Depending on your hospital they might be totally cool with you having a facial piercing, or like mine they might not be cool at all! Mine isn't so I wear one in my nose piercing but it's up to you, although it's something worth looking into and considering buying.
• Hair and MakeupOne for the girls among us perhaps! General rule of thumb for nursing staff is that your hair should be above your collar, you'll see plenty of people disobaying this rule, but the only way to escape a bollocking is to follow it. Also - quite aside from any kind of infection control it makes me gag to think of my hair hanging into a wound or something! So I always wear my hair in a bun, a normal bun tends to fall out in my hair so I use a bun doughnut, it was about £2 from Tesco and I wear it every day - so I can't really recommend it highly enough!
  Also invest in a good quality moisturiser and foundation, I'm not one for high end brands or anything - but I haven't found a foundation that stays as well over a 12 hour shift as Bobbi Brown's Skin foundation SPF 15. And the combination of no air, hot wards and long hours with little sleep wreaks havoc on my skin - so make sure to invest in some kick ass moisturiser. I love Simple's light moisturiser but go for what you love!
  
  
  

So I hope that that list is all right for you all - it's not all encompassing and it's not total, and it's just my own personal list of what I felt is needed most on placement. So feel free to comment on what other things you think might be needed, and a massive good luck to anyone starting their nursing course this September!

Just jump in!

This was a piece of advice that I gave to a nurse starting her first placement, on my latest placement I was faced with so many opportunities to try out new skills that I had observed, like making up IV's, catheterising, dressings and passing NG (naso-gastric) tubes. But a lot of these things i.e. the NG tube, will happen occasionally and not on a lot of wards, so if you get the chance to do one - then do it!

A properly placed NG tube on an X-ray

Over my 10 week placement, but the time I reached my 9th week I had seen two NG's being passed, and while on a night shift one needed doing. So - putting on my best confident in this face I asked to do it. It was terrifying, it's easy to put an NG down the trachea instead of the oesophagus for example. (For the record - that is a bad idea!) And obviously, shoving a tube down someone's nose isn't much fun for them, and a lot of people have really strong gag reflexes, some people will try and hit you, scratch you and kick you, but after a point it becomes more important to get the tube down to their stomach to feed them than to avoid being maimed. With the 12 hour shifts and the missed breaks and the poor pay, half the fun of nursing is getting to be a martyr and striding into the house at 8am after a night shift to proclaim: "I got kicked in the stomach tonight but at least Mr Smith isn't going to go into a diabetic coma on my watch!"

Edith Cavell .
A WW1 British nurse, executed for helping Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium. 

So my tip to the lovely student nurse I met on my (now former) ward, was to just jump in, if you see someone about to do something that you're interested in, then go on and ask if you can watch. I've watched:

• Chest drains, ( I actually became part of Dr Williams' Chest Drain Dream Team!)
• Lumbar punctures,
• PICO dressings,
• A Bronchoalveolar lavage,
• Seen some really funky wounds,
• Passed an NG tube,
• Removed cannulas 
• Watched a load of X-Rays

and many many more things besides. Speaking to the fellow student nurse, she was nervous and was a bit unsure about how to get to do stuff. I tried to reassure her and now I'm trying to reassure you guys too - the way to gain experience is to nag, wheedle and blag your way into watch procedures, because once you've watched once or twice, you can offer to lend a hand for the next few, and after that you can ask to do them yourselves.

Experience breeds Competence

I've now finished that particular 10 week placement, and it's now onwards and upwards, that pesky assignment that I was worried I had failed I passed so I'm clear to move onto the second year! I've moved out of halls (or the prison-cum-psychiatric hospital that my Mam christened it) and into my new shared house which is very exciting, it's going to be fun if a little difficult, we're all very different people with big personalities, different interests, different senses of humour and everything so I'm sure sparks will fly but we're all really close friends and we all love alcohol and bacon so I'm sure that things wont be too bad!

The idea that I'm now a second year student nurse is terrifying, 1/3 of the way through my course, my Mam pointed out that I left high school and started 6th form 3 years ago - and in 3 years time, I'll be a qualified in my blues, hopefully doing everything right (ish)

I'll speak to you all soon, and if any of you are particularly interested then my next post is going to be a "Student nurse haul" blog post, about what you will need for those of you starting your training in September.