 Hi everyone and welcome back. So this is a vlog all about the day in a life of a student-ness. So I'm going to split this into two sections. I'm going to split one into placements and one into university life. Let's start with university life because university is the first stop. It's the first place that we're going to be at before placements start to get the knowledge and theory behind us. Usually your day at university will run anytime between 9 a.m. till 7 p.m. in the evening. For my university in particular, which is Birmingham City University, we don't have any set days, set times, anything like that. It is literally just, here's your timetable, that's it. One day we might be in 9 till 12, another day we might be in 9 till 5, another day we might be in till 5 till 7 or 4 till 6. All of our timetables is really random. There's no set days, times, anything like that but you do get your timetable in advance, which is a bonus. So our timetables are like for weeks in advance, so we know what we've got and when we've got it and you can sort of plan your life around it, which is a massive, massive help, I think, especially for you guys that have got children, take my hats off to you all but it's really good for planning your life around children and families and things like that. Just for me personally, if I'm due to be at university for 9 a.m. I will get there an hour early, so I will always get there for eight and I will dedicate an hour of my life to doing a bit of work before I start university. This is my protected hour that I give myself and to be fair, I'm really on the ball with it. For the first two and a half years I've been really good at it. It's only been the last month I think that I've sort of been slacking a little bit but I usually get there early either way. I will get there at least 30 minutes early so I can have a cup of tea because our university has a Starbucks, it has a coaster, it has a canteen where you can get breakfast and coffees and tea, and so I get there a little bit earlier so I can get a drink, settle down and get ready for my day. My uni friends, we have got a WhatsApp group so we will WhatsApp each other into our main WhatsApp group and just be like, is anyone at uni yet and we'll all meet up and we'll have a tea, a coffee, whatever before starting lectures, which is really really nice and it's just a really social thing to do I think. It sort of gets you ready for the day, meeting up with your friends, it's a really really nice way to start the day so that is a massive top tip if you're beginning university. Once you've made your friends get a WhatsApp group and meet before lectures and go into lectures together it's just it's really nice it's lovely. Now I do quite a lot at university so I do a lot of extracurricular activities so even though I'm off from lectures I will be at university doing something most of the time so I take part, I've took part in the seminar series as part of the HAAS which is the High Achievers Recognition Scheme University, they put on seminar series to build your leadership and mentoring and coaching, post-presentations, interviews, all of that, everything we need as nurses basically and I took part in those and I was going there on my days off. I also do some volunteering at the uni and I am also a student academic leader. I take part in a lot of the surveys and I take part in a lot of the quality improvement days that we have at university so just recently we had the NMC come in, talk about the new set of standards for the new students in September this year and I got to be part of that and give my input, answer any questions that they had for us and it was just amazing it was a really good experience and that was completely voluntary as well, did get a free lunch though, if there's free lunch I'm there but I do things like that. I really love to be involved in university and I find that keeps me really motivated and it keeps you on track on this course because it can be sometimes a little bit stressful and it's nice to do these extra little things just to keep you on track and keep you motivated so my days are jam packed but I love it. So after university or after lectures, after my extracurricular activities I come home and I usually spend a couple of hours in the evening doing some work whether it's revision assignments at the minutes dissertation so I'll spend a couple of hours in the evening doing some dissertation then I'll sit down and I'll have my dinner sometimes depending what time I finish university if I finish early I'll do my work first and then I'll have my dinner and settle down for the night sometimes I will have my dinner first and then do my work after but I find doing it that way around if I'm working before bed I will start having nightmares about work and overload and revision and stuff it's happened so many times so I try and avoid revising especially if it's a stressful exam or something like that I avoid revising before bed but I will tend to write assignments and things like that because that's not as stressful I don't think for me but just a word of warning you might have that experience I hope not and also if you have a full-on day at university you will get regular breaks throughout the day you'll get a lunch break we usually have like an hour for lunch sometimes two or three hours in between lectures so if it's nice we'll go outside and we'll sit in the sun we'll have an ice cream we'll have some food it's amazing we'll have a laugh together and then just prepare ourselves for the next lecture sometimes we have gone to the library as well on our lunch breaks and we've sat down and we spoke to the library and with things that we've all sort of been struggling with which has been a massive help but mainly we do eat and we recharge and get back to it so our university does Monday to Friday we don't do weekends in fact I don't know any universities that are open at weekends you know have lectures at weekends so you should ideally have weekends free I tend to work I work on Saturdays I used to work on Sundays but they've closed our clinic on a Sunday now so I don't do a Sunday so I usually do Saturday sometimes a day in the week if I've got a couple of days off in the week but yeah so I do work once or twice a week every now and then mainly when I'm at university when I'm on placements it's a different matter I try and avoid to work when I'm on placements because it's a little bit too much I think a little bit too intense and you have to meet those legal requirements of your 48 hours a week so I try and stick to that all of my placements so far have been an hour and a half away on Plubic Transport so I had to be really organised I get up at 5am and I'm out the house by 5 30 I literally spend 30 minutes getting ready that is it I prepare everything the night before so I'm ready to go the next day I get up I wash do my face done out the house and then I get two buses to placements so far I'm waiting for my next allocation so hopefully it's going to be closer please for my last one but so I'll get two buses to placement and then I will arrive at placement at 7am this is for the wards so on my ward placements I arrive at 7am then you sort of have that morning routine where you get patients up washed dressed system with breakfast if they need their breakfast you'll do your ward rounds you'll do your fluid balances and do your medications sometimes with your mentor depending how busy it is and then you'll have sort of a tea break sort of in between morning and lunch you'll have a little tea break depending on the ward area you're in and then you'll come back and then you'll go around and you'll do all the fluid balance and things like that end of bed notes you'll document in the care plans you will document in the care notes as well for your patient what you've done for that morning and then it'll be lunchtime so you help get the lunches round to your patients help assist anybody that needs help with eating and drinking and then after lunch you sort of go around make sure your patients are okay make sure if there's any wound dressings to do do the wound dressings do your care rounds which is you check in the pressure relief make sure they've drank eaten moving about making sure your patients are okay basically hourly making sure they've got the call bell by them jug beside them and a sort of after lunch it sort of calms down a little bit i feel and there's that period between about two and four those two hours that sort of seem a little bit calmer unless something's happened and you're short staffed or something like that and then it goes a little bit chaotic but nine times out of ten that is the quieter sort of period i advise anyone if you're calling your placement to get your allocated shifts do it at this time call them around two p.m three p.m to get your shifts because that's when they'll be most quiet and hopefully be able to answer your call and sort out your rotor for you just a top tip this is also a time to catch up on any paperwork observations that you haven't managed to do in the morning anything that your patients need help with you can if it's really really quiet i tend to go around and speak to my patients sit with them make sure they're okay see if there's anything i can do for them and then five o'clock will be your meal time so you will again assist with meal times assist with any eating and drinking if needed don't forget to fill out the food diaries as well for each meals for each patient if they're on a food diary fluid balance make sure that's all documented and then in the evening you're sort of settling patients down anyone that wants to get into the pajamas or anything like that you can help them sometimes you do the observations again so there'll be patients that are on different timed observations which is the blood pressure temperature pulse rate with spiritual rate and just some will be on four times a day some will be on twice a day some will be on one today it just depends what your patient is so keep a note of what patients are due the observations when because sometimes you'll be going around again before you finish at seven half seven at night and you'll be doing your observations again before you go home and then reporting that back to your mentor if there's any abnormalities to that make sure you always report anything abnormal that you notice document in the observations report it if anyone's scoring one two three four five whatever just report it also you should get a lunch break so you'll get a lunch break and another break like a tea break as well in the evening some people do a 10 minute morning break and then they'll have like a half an hour lunch break sometimes you have an hour for lunch and then you don't have a break in the evening or sometimes you'll have sort of 15 minutes in the morning 30 minutes for lunch and then 15 minutes in the afternoon it just different world wards do completely different things i've found so just assess it when you get to your placement but make sure you always rest recharge and get your energy back for when you go back always have your break guys we are not paid for this with supernumery make sure you get your breaks so that was just a really quick run through of award placement now i'm just going to briefly talk about my community placement that i had which was completely different completely completely different to the award it was i loved it those of you that have watched my videos before know i love gp i love community nursing it is where i am going to be i'm a community nurse through and through that's it so my gp placement was amazing i worked Monday to Friday and my shifts were all different throughout the week so on a Monday i did nine till seven was it i think it was nine till seven oh my god that's really bad that i can't remember it was last year so nine till seven was Monday and then a Tuesday would be like nine till two and then a Wednesday would be nine till four and then Thursday would be like nine till 12 nine till one and then a Friday would be again nine till 12 we always had one long day and then the rest was short days on a Friday i always went with the doctor because my mentor didn't work on a Friday so i sat in with the doctor which is amazing if you've got a community placement please ask to go with your doctor for a day just to see from that perspective of things and how they do things and how they assess patients it's absolutely amazing it was so so nice to see that side of things really really lovely and my doctor was amazing i absolutely loved the doctor there so yeah so the hours were varied i was actually given my very own clinics to run so i was given my own room with my own little name on the thing no more student nurse it was clerical michael that was my clinic i had my own patients for hypertension diabetes asthma any wound dressing as well because my mentor knew i loved wounds so i did the wounds new patient health checks as well that was amazing and so i had all of those patients but i always knew that my mentor was there and the doctor was there so if i needed anything if i struggled with anything if i had any problems i knew i could call upon them in those times of need which was amazing and it only happened a couple of times thankfully and finally my top tip for placement is ask as many questions as you can no question is a stupid question and make the most of every opportunity whether you enjoy that particular ward whether you don't like the ward you have to make the most of every single opportunity thrown at you because we're going to learn so so much from each and every ward whether we like it or not and it's just an amazing time to learn and gain experience and you will learn something from every placement that you have guaranteed and just a little reminder one bad day on placement one bad experience one bad whole placement does not define your career as a nurse your career as a nurse is going to be amazing you're going to love life to the fullest when you're qualified working in the place an area that you want to work in it's going to be amazing and it's going to be so rewarding and you're going to love it absolutely love it