It was a short week and the teaching revolved around the introduction to branches of medicine that would be covered in greater depth later in Essential Junior Rotation beginning January (Paedicatrics, Mental Health) and a day for nursing shift. It was a short week since we got days off on Monday and Tuesday (thank god for that!!!).
Introduction sessions to Paediatrics and Mental Health were nothing eventful so I'm just gonna focused on the nursing shift because even when it was just a day of an 8-hour shift, I was beyond knackered as if I've spent the entire week working at the hospital!
The whole idea of making medical students go through the nursing shift was to make us realise that medicine and healthcare was a team game where one man alone wouldn't be enough to keep evil (diseases n illnesses) at bay. Sound communication and team work from all involved (consultants, junior doctors, nurses from round-the-clock shifts, pharmacists, porters) are very crucial to ensure the well-being of the patients in the ward.
I'd have to admit that the nursing shift was definitely one of the most valuable experience I've had so far. It was extremely tiring (especially in the Medical Admission ward where I was based at since all patients who come through the ER will be located there before going to other wards specifically according to their health problems) but seeing and helping the nurses was a very eye-opening experience.
I was attached to this small but very tough Pinoy nurse who, short and stout she might be, moved like she had wheels for her feet making sure all her patients were in good condition. The whole thing started at 7:30 in the morning where the night-shift nurse briefed her about the patients that came through the night before. Sound communication was of the utmost important seeing as if the night nurse forgot to tell something crucial to the morning nurse, that might jeopardise the patients' health. After that, It was time to give out the pills to the patients. Some will think it was easy because the nurse only had to look at a patient's drug card and gave the pills according to what was prescribed (it was a challenge for me since I had to count the number of pills according to the amount prescribed - I failed at Math!!!) but the nurse also need to know what each drug was for and the possible adverse effects just in case something were to go wrong. Of course, giving out the pills was a lot easier than making sure patients take the pills! Then came the part where the nurse had to change the dirty bed linens (blood, faeces, you name it!) and not all patients were in a condition good enough they could move from the bed to sit on the chair. At times, the nurse had to replace the linen while the patients were on the bed and helping her rolled the patients one side to another as we fitted the bed sheets and blankets, I wondered how she managed it on her own. Most of the patients were a lot bigger than the both of us combined! Then came the washing part where the nurse had to go around all the patients she was covering helping and giving them a wash, cleaning the urine of those who were on a cathether (a tube inserted through their genitals into the bladders to drain the urine in a bag) and removing the bedpan containing patients' faeces of various colours and smells. And as the day continued, the nurse would also carry out some medical procedures needed depending on the patients' need (venupuncture, cannulation, sending the patients for imaging) and doing the observation chart and early warning score (some sort of scoring system of vital signs to see if the patients are in stable condition) every few hours and before long it was already noon and it's time to give out the pills again!
It was a never-ending cycle! On that day, the nurse was only covering two bays of around 6-8 patients (some would be transferred to another ward in midday while new patients would come in so the number varies) and I believed my presence made her job slightly lighter and even then, she only took one break for less than 30 minutes. I helped her do the obs and EWS, went with two patients for an x-ray and an endoscopy, cleaned the bum of a granny twice (yes, trust me!). It would be perfectly fine if all 6-8 patients listened to us but heck, you could bet your money there would be one or two very difficult patients. One encounter I had was of an old woman with dementia who refused to put on her oxygen mask when she had difficulty breathing. I had to check on her every ten minutes to make sure she didn't take off the mask when we're not looking which she did everytime I checked so I had to put it back on, repeating the same line of how she needed it. Another was of a confused man with Parkinson's and weak legs wandering around the busy ward talking incessantly, very disorientated. One moment he was talking about his sons and daughters, another about how his wife was going to leave him and at times trying to borrow some money from me because he wanted to make phone calls. He even tried to leave the wards several times apart from insisting that every visitors that came through the door were his brothers or relatives. I was tasked to run around after him and by mid-day, I think the guy hated me more than anything!
The whole experience made me realised how undervalued nurses are. It is no secret that many value doctors more than the nurses. Whenever we hear the experience of someone with relatives having to stay in the ward, the usual story would be of how nice and clever the doctors are for being able to find a cure or to have successfully done so-and-so surgeries, rarely do we hear praises for the nurses who have looked after them all day long during their stay in the ward. Many will complain about how slow the nurses were at doing their jobs, rarely attending to the patients' needs when they called or something of that sort. Many seems to think that if a nurse fails to attend to his or her relative's needs, the nurse is slacking around somewhere, forgetting the fact that the nurse has many other patients to attend to! I guess I was the same when my father was admitted to the hospital. Read here for my experience. What people need to realise is that nurses are not like most civil servants who would slack for a good hour going on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube compromising all sorts of customer services. If a nurse can't attend to a certain patient, there's a great chance she is attending to another patient who needs greater attention and if a nurse were to commit a mistake (it's not acceptable, but it happens), don't be so quick to judge because they spend the entire time moving around the ward doing things that have great bearing as to whether someone would live or die. Most people do some very ridiculous mistakes even when all they ever do is sit at their desks, in their air-conditioned offices, staring at the computer screen!
It really is not the easiest job - caring for random strangers, dealing with the most intimate and private issues in a person's life. It's probably the hardest ever seeing as how huge the responsibility is. Nurses truly are the unsung heroes and I believe we all should start respecting them more than we give credits. So yeah, we might wanna remember them by sending them cards on May 12 which is the World's Nurses Day although it really shouldn't be limited at that day only.
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