As a nurse in accident and emergency I’m the first person you’ll see. I’ll triage you, order your bloods and x-rays, interpret results, get you painkillers, take your blood pressure and pulse and escalate any issues to senior staff. If I suspect or you disclose abuse, I report this. If you are not looking after your health I’ll help you realise this. I put on your plaster cast, change your dressings, suture your cuts and take you to the toilet.
Before I trained to be a nurse I worked for four years as a parliamentary researcher after graduating with a degree in international relations. My calling, as such, hit me after the result of the 2010 election. I felt it was time to do something practical with my life and not sit in an office telling other people what they should be doing.
I couldn’t have trained as a nurse if it wasn’t for the bursary – it’s vital to those who cannot fund themselves
My course attracted a fabulously diverse group of people: artists, teachers, a child psychologist, full-time mothers, and several biomedical scientists. We had all given up other jobs to be there and were able to because the course had a £6,000 a year NHS bursary attached to it. Since qualifying in 2013 I suspect we have all repaid our debt to society a thousand times over.
I love the privilege of nursing and working in the emergency department of a major trauma hospital in London suits me; it’s fast paced, chaotic, entertaining and no minute is ever the same. My colleagues are dedicated, vibrant, intelligent and driven but a day at work is often exhausting.
We start already stretched to capacity. Several hours are spent moving patients through to beds elsewhere in the hospital or to other hospitals if we have no chance of creating more space where we are. This is a priority before the mid-morning build-up starts. From lunchtime things really begin to kick off – we can have 15 ambulances arrive in a matter of minutes. As the ambulance triage nurse it can be breathtakingly stressful trying to filter the emergencies out. Sometimes you can have five or six patients all deserving of a bed in the resuscitation area and no space to put them. The rest of my time is spent apologising to everyone else. I hear myself saying again and again: “It may be several hours before the doctor sees you, but we’ll make sure you have all the tests done in the meantime.”
We leave patients in corridors or on chairs who should really be in beds and in rooms. I’ve had women miscarrying in the waiting room and store rooms because there’s no trolley for them anywhere else. It’s hard to remember the joy in nursing when this happens so regularly. I hate that I leave people waiting in pain. It goes against my every instinct as a nurse but sadly sometimes we have to because there’s so many competing demands.
As a major trauma centre staff are regularly confronted with horrific injuries and accidents and rarely have time to digest these personally. Frustratingly these patients can often be drunk and abusive or have acute mental health problems that are hard to manage on top of their injuries. I’ve got scars on my arms where a patient has taken a chunk out of my skin. Another time, a patient swung a punch at me and when I ducked he smashed the window behind my head. There’s not much I have on my side but a clear head and agility.
I couldn’t have trained as a nurse if it wasn’t for the bursary – it’s vital to those who cannot fund themselves. I still had to borrow money off my parents and work part-time as it didn’t even cover my rent. The soul-grindingly hard work you experience as a student nurse sets you up well for your career. Yes, nursing is a vocation and a job you would be foolish to undertake for financial reward, but we do what we can to keep the NHS afloat.
Bursaries are vital for the future of nursing | Anonymous
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