Tuesday, December 18, 2007

One More Wanging

I need sleep; the last two days, I have been thoroughly wang-eyed. So much so I was in fear of fonging the car on the way home...

Anyway; of scut, and scutmonkeys. Faith is having some difficulty with her nurse mentors. Now, I don't pretend to understand nursing training. Mostly, I don't understand nurses. I just do what they tell me.

All the student nurses we see are attached to a trained nurse (or maybe more than one? one per shift, one at a time? You See! I don't know!) and so I guess they do what the trained nurse does, and learn how to become the shining examples of patience and goodliness that are nurses. Or at least the ones that have to put up with me, anyway. How nurses decide what their trainees can do, or are allowed to do, I have no idea.

With medical students, I ask 'em what they wanna do, then make 'em do what I think they should be doing. Hopefully there is interaction between the two. Where possible, I like to try and stretch the students, get them out of their comfort zone, doing something they aren't quite comfortable with; but something they'll need to do sooner or later. A 'get it over with' strategy.

Faith, on the other hand, seems to spend most of her time being told what she can't do. It seems to me that there are really very few things that a person should be forbidden to do. If your entrance programme works ok, that is you aren't admitting muppets to your training programme, then why not let 'em at it?

Of course, this has to be a 'within reason' strategy. But if a third year student wants to cannulate someone, why not? Hell, if they're too afraid to do it on patients, I let 'em do it to me. I firmly believe in 'see one, do one, teach one'. And I don't see why it should be different for nurses. These are intelligent people we're dealing with, surely. Can't they be treated as such? Or am I just blowing gas about something I know very little about?

Lastly, for the sake of Devil's Advocacy, I think, in fairness, that being a student is mostly about being the scutmonkey, in all it's various guises - bedmonkey, admisions monkey, arsemonkey, etc. Sometimes, you just have to chimp up, and get what you can from the grooming.

(Yes, I know chimps aren't monkeys. It's dramatic licence. Don't make me fong your wanging eyes...)

2 comments:

Nurse Sandra May said...

Oh bless you Shroom.

Its not been the best of placements. I've feel like ive been hit by a truck.

Yes, we are attached to a staff nurse for the shift. It SHOULD be one of our mentors (we usually get two). Quite often it is not a mentor. Sometimes it will be a different staff nurse every day. We do not have any continuity with what we are doing if we don't work with the same person- i think this is where its stemmed from.

Being a very awkward person though, I am very argumentative and I want to understand why I do things a certain way- a lot of nurses don't take kindly to this which is why they don't like me.

Today was horrible- but a blog post will follow if i can summon up the energy.

Chrysalis said...

When I was in training here in the states, we had an instructor on the floors, as well as worked with various staff nurses. We were given ample opportunities for hands on, which I feel is the best way to learn. I worked in three of the areas hospitals and all three were teaching hospitals. Like you I believe in the "see one, do one, teach one". Sometimes there weren't enough of certain cases and you didn't feel confident without more exposure, but I think that happens to all that go into the field. I hope things get better for your friend, and I hope you are able to get some rest!