Rachel Hughes, one of our nursing team
International Nurses Day is upon us, and who better to shed some light on what it’s like to be a nurse, than one of our own! Rachel explains:
I joined the Nursing Team at St Wulfstan back in September, coming from a mixed background of acute and community nursing; during my Nurse training there was this view that to work in practice nursing you had to a) be nearing retirement, b) want an easy life, and c) have no problem losing clinical skills… Well, I’m constantly learning, it’s definitely not easy, and unless there are some dramatic changes, I’m probably a few decades off retirement... So what do we do every day?!
Quite often, your Nurse or Health Care Assistant will be the first medical person you speak to in years – you might come in for an NHS health check after 5 years of trying desperately to avoid coming to the Doctor, and we’ll give you an MOT, along with some diet and lifestyle advice… And then you’ll mention that one issue that’s been niggling at you just a little bit, but you don’t want to talk to the doctor because you’ve never had a day off sick in your life… We’ll do our best to point you in the right direction, whether it’s reminding you to get your eyes checked regularly, asking you to book in for a nursing appointment, or recommending you speak to one of our GPs.
Maybe you’re anxious about coming in for a smear because, well- it’s a smear! Your nurse may well be the one to reassure you that it’s totally normal – we are almost all women, after all, and we know, it’s not the nicest experience of your life - but we’ll also tell you why that screening programme is so SO important, and offer to get you booked in. And when you’re there, we will probably acknowledge the awkwardness, put you at ease, and make you feel as comfortable as possible… And we may even make you laugh while we’re at it. But while we’re doing that we’re also listening to see if you’re having any symptoms that are out of the ordinary, looking at your medications to see if your pill could be causing you to have some irregular bleeding, and checking that everything looks healthy ‘down there’ – and on that note, I promise, we really don’t mind if you haven’t ‘prepared’.
I’ve always loved that nurses have this reputation of being lovely and friendly, but we also have a lot of knowledge, and have to do a lot of training to be allowed to sit in front of you and give you medical advice. From knowing how to give you an injection, to being able to treat an infected wound, or helping you manage a chronic disease to give you the best quality of life possible. There is a lot going on behind the scenes in order to make sure we can look after our patients properly, support our Doctors where needed, and refer to other teams when necessary, too.
We can’t make everything better, but we’ll do our absolute best to find someone who can!
So, Happy International Nurses Day – we’re pretty proud to be Nurses, really!"