What a surprise!

Well, its soon time to give in the final draft of my thesis, I thank god i caught up with everyone else, even though this week-end im gonna work my ass off to have it ready and at A+ standard. I can only hope and pray.

So at the moment we are all having clinical assessments, that is, a clinical tutor comes to the ward which we chose to do our exam in and watches us work and corrects any potential malpractice we might perform and training us for our final practical. Tomorrow I have mine, and since I take it very seriously, I have a huge list of drugs to study and patient histories to read.

Therefore, this post is once again in point form to save time. Here are a list of surprises one may come across while taking the course of BSc (hons) nursing and working as a student on the ward.

1. Things on the floor: As I was walking into work, I see a huge dollop of pudding on the floor. And another. And another. Only it wasn't pudding. It was shit. All over the hallway. Yum. It trailed until the doctor's desk. When I looked in the doctor's waste paper basket I found a huge colostomy bag, overflowing with shit. It was smelly.(a colostomy bag is directy attached to the large intestine and shit drains into it.) The doctor was shocked. Over all it was a funny surprise.

2. Things on old people's skin: We went to wash our fully dependent patient (a fully dependent patient is one of those who could do nothing for herself). As we open her nappy, we discover a large bandage over her sacrum. When we remove the bandage, we find a waterfall of pus and pseudomonas (a green bacteria that turns pus luminous green) splashing out onto the bed. When we begin to clean the sore, we put in the swab and come across something hard. What do you know! Its a bit of exposed bone! Woo hoo! Yee haaaa!

3. Things in a patients history: I read a patient's history a few months back and it said that this poor old man had cancer. He was 85 years old. I thought about asking him to be my patient for the next day so I went to talk to him, to see who he lives with, his housing condition and other aspects of his social history. So after 5 minutes of talking to him, this old man exclaims "Yep, the doctor said I am great! I'm ok,nothing to worry about!" to which I reply "Heh heh, ok..." BOING! That had the potential to be a very,very ugly surprise. Thank God I was careful. Jesus.

4. Things in a patient's bed: I went to wash an old lady who smiled on my arrival. She looked so peaceful, all tucked up in bed. I went near her to say good morning. To return the gesture, she held my hand. The only problem was that hers had been in her nappy. And she had diarrhoea. And when I removed her top sheet, SURPRISE! she was swimming in it. She had shit from head to toe...piss too. What fun!

Sigh. I never liked surprises. Good night, much love.