Nursing blog

  The research secondment   Oh Team Research Where do I start? I came for 6 months And you stole my heart   I have LOVED every minute of my research secondment.   I have never felt more useful, inspired, motivated and valued.   It had been one of the proudest moments of my nursing career.   I started in late September 2020 and the team were in the middle of multiple urgent public health studies.   The workload was huge – and at this point only getting bigger.   When the pandemic started all research studies were put on hold and teams across the UK took on only urgent public health studies.   These studies were set up with lighting speed in the combined effort nationally and globally to fight COVID-19.     To be able to say I was part of that.   That our District General was part of that. Wow. Most of these studies were well underway when I joined the team but I was lucky enough to see the FALCON study fr...

  It is International Women’s Day on the 8 th of March and the theme is ‘Everyday Courage’.   This is to honour the courage shown by women in health care.   Every day over the past year I have seen courage all around.   I have been rotated, redeployed and now seconded – I have been privileged to meet many people outside my usual circle at work and I have loved it.   Everyone has so much everyday courage, from the obvious, such as nursing covid patients.   It was so scary putting on that PPE, it felt so alien, so tight, altered your usual senses so you had to learn to work in a slightly different way.   It squashes your face and makes deep marks but you were glad of it because there was a time when we didn’t always know we would have it.   To do this repeatedly, perhaps on a different ward than usual, totally out your comfort zone, showed remarkable everyday courage.   I remember this specialist nurse telling me after a long time off afte...

 I remember the exact moment I was introduced to Team Boo.  We were in the middle of a pandemic – these guys were the team brought in for support.  I wondered who this specialist elite team were. I remember thinking what was a ‘Boo’?  All I knew was we needed support.  So, I invited them up to the unit I was working on, to explain who they were and what they did.  They were good I’ll give you that – introductions were made and I knew, right, if someone is struggling – call Team Boo.  From the get go we got constant messages of wellbeing and support, positivity and praise.  You could forget easily that they had not always been a part of our Trust.  Little purple pockets of positivity, gifts and messages sprouted through the spring/summer of 2020 like bulbs did.  They helped keep us going. One day I was told to seek out the Boo’s for support for myself and so I did…   I didn’t want to though.   Although I like the Boo’s – I...

  Blog 2 here we go – I know I can’t believe it either!   Recently I’ve been thinking about the ‘Code’ – you know that NMC one that we all have to follow https://www.nmc.org.uk/standards/code/   Maybe it’s because I have to pay my annual fees soon or maybe it’s because everything’s a bit heavy right now.   It always brings me comfort to go back to the code, it brings me certainty in an uncertain time, allows me to order my thoughts, feelings, reflections in a way that really gets back to what it’s all about. I don’t know about you but I’m tired.   Covid has used up a lot of energy.   Personal tragedy has hit me as I know it’s hit most people – add to that picking up the pieces at work whether it be patients and their family or supporting staff who are overwhelmed.   So, I go back to the code to make sense of it all and number one is ‘prioritise people’.   Now think of those words ‘ prioritise PEOPLE ’, it could just say prioritise patie...

Hi – first blog here – gulp! It’s a bit nerve wracking isn’t it, writing a blog.    That type of thing should be left to important people, who have things to say and know how to spell.    I’m a nurse, which sort of does make me an important person (I'm essential said in the Tik Tok voice). So, I find myself here - somehow writing a blog - because I feel I have something important to say and shine a light on. Shine a light – that’s going to be a key theme! #carrythelamp This is 2020, ‘The year of the nurse and midwife’, Florence Nightingale’s bicentenary.   All of that is  pretty mega and we should be celebrating but … you know … Covid 19 and all that.    Therefore n urses right now need supporting as much as celebrating. This year nursing and midwifery professionals have had to face an unprecedented global pandemic and work harder than ever before.   Imagine working long days in PPE, helping others, yet being in your own crisis, despe...