 So firstly I want to do a massive shout out to Nurse Karin, she's a nurse over in Ireland and she's just fantastic. Please go and check her page out, I'm gonna leave the link below. Go and have a look and I'm so so glad that she's back and she's vlogging again. Yes! She's great and she's such a lovely girl and she's gonna make a great nurse, you can tell just by the way she is and what she posts and things like that. She's fantastic so go and check her out. Thank you! Hi everyone, so today is Friday. I have three days before starting my next placement. I'm excited to get back into it but I'm not looking forward to the early starts and the late nights because I'm on the ward and I haven't, I said this in a previous vlog, none of you have seen me on a ward yet and I haven't vlogged about ward work yet and it's gonna be a new experience for you all so we'll just leave it like that. I'm gonna be so tired. It's gonna be a great experience though because it's orthopedics and I love orthopedics and I love surgical and all of that jazz so I am excited for it. But anyway so today is Friday, I am filling out my documents. So as you might have seen on my GP placement we all have these documents so these are our placement documents that we fill out as we go and our mentor signs it for us so there'll be a lot of boxes inside that our mentor has to sign us off and there's a section at the front that we fill out and each section inside so we've got professional values, we've got communication, team working, we have what's this one nursing practice and decision making so we've got all these and we have to fill out a little section in them just saying that you've read the above standards and what's your personal development plan going to be for that particular area. So I'm currently just filling that out just wanted to do that and this is our actual big folder that we keep all of our documents in so I've got every single one of my placement books in here and we also have an ongoing, hang on I'll get this out in a minute, so we also have an ongoing record of achievement where we keep all of our mentor feedback and all of our sign-off sheets in there. We also have our field specific spectrum so we have to get signed off, all of these things, we have to get signed off babies, children and young people, pregnant and postnatal women, adults, old people, mental health, long-term conditions and end-of-life care, learning disabilities and physical and mental needs of a patient basically. I've got literally every single section signed off already and to be honest I've finished that in my GPU practice placement because we saw a whole range of people. So then the next one we have is our medicines management so in first year for both placements we had five medicines to learn the side effects and everything like that. Now second year is 10 and then third year oh we've got 10 for third year I thought it was 20 for some reason. I think it's on the last placement, the management placement, we have 20 to learn for the very last placement so that's my documentation. So before I start my placement I always call the ward that I'm going to be working on like two weeks, at least two weeks, sometimes three depending how excited I am. So this time it's about two and a half weeks before I just rang up to find out who my mentor was and what my shifts were going to be for the first week and she actually gave me my shifts for the first three weeks which is unheard of on a ward. Usually they tell you to show up on the Monday and they'll sort the rest of your timetable out on the day with you. So I was well impressed initially with this organization skills of the ward that they've given me the first three weeks and it's amazing so I'm going to be working Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays on the ward for the next three weeks and that's amazing but I don't mind working weekends, a lot of people don't like to work weekends but I love working weekends because one traffic getting to the placement is a lot better, there's a lot more parking spaces as well and everything seems a little bit more relaxed at the weekends, weekends and bank holidays, everything seems just a little bit more relaxed and people seem happier, it's really bizarre, you need to experience it to believe this if that makes sense but I really enjoy working the weekends on the wards, actually in any healthcare setting I've worked at the weekends have always been really good and the bank holidays. I really don't mind what I work to be honest, whatever they give me I will do happily. The only thing I do worry about is night shifts because it takes me, I live a good 22 miles away from my placement at the minute. It's a two-hour bus journey, it's a couple of buses, there's no trains running at that time, I have to get there at 7am so I have to be up, I have to be out the door and on a bus at half past four in the morning to get there for seven o'clock, it's hell. Luckily I can have the car when I'm on placement so I do drive and it takes just over an hour. When I'm coming home because of the traffic load in the evenings it's like an hour and a half so it is tiring, I have to leave early, I have to be on the ball and when I get home it's about nine o'clock by the time you've eaten and it's just it's very tiring so I'm going to be showing you all of that, you've got all of that to look forward to from me. So what do I hope to get from this placement? I'm looking to get a lot more because I haven't done a discharge before so I would like to experience how to discharge a patient and also pre-op checklist, I really want to experience the pre-op checklist and if there's some sort of pathway where I can follow the patient through theatres, watch them have the surgery, come back, doing all the checks and things like that, like a full journey, full cycle. I would love to see that on orthopedics so we'll see, hopefully I'll be able to experience that and just the general running of orthopedic wards. This year I haven't had a ward so I think I've just lost the touch of the ward work a little bit so I just need to get myself back into it but you know it's like riding a bike, once you're in there everything just comes flying back to you and you remember all of this stuff so I'm really excited for it. When I called my placement as well they sounded amazing, they were really lovely on the phone, really puts you at ease calling your placement before you go and I'm just really excited so this is just my pre-vlog before I start on Monday and then Monday I'll vlog the day and let you know how it all goes, what I'm getting up to, what I've been doing, what I've experienced, anything tough that I've well the hours will be tough for me, I will be emotionally drained on the ward, I'm going to warn you now, it's going to be a very different vlog, I'll still be positive and happy and motivated but I am going to be emotionally drained, I might even cry because I cried first year after the wards because I was exhausted and it's tiring, it's really really tiring but I think it's good to show that side of it because it's it's not always going to be 100% yeah yeah positive, look amazing, a nursing's amazing, fantastic, yeah it's not all like that but I am that sort of person that throws myself in and make the most of everything even when I don't like something no one will ever know because I throw myself in and make the most of every opportunity and I'm just a genuinely positive, motivated person so that's just the way I am and that's the way I always am, even if I'm crying about my ward I'll still be happy because I'm experiencing so much and I know that I'm doing a good job for a patient and I hope I'm doing a good job for a patient but the one thing I am confident with is my nursing practice and looking after a patient and caring for a patient effectively that is one thing that I am confident with and because I've worked in healthcare for 10 years it's something that's just it comes naturally to me so academic side exams things that no no no I'm not confident with those but hands-on experience that's something I know that I'm okay with and I know I practice safely and if I didn't know something I would go and talk to somebody about and get help with like and I'm confident with that sort of thing I'm really excited about my placement despite the hours but I am excited I'm excited to get stuck in and I'm excited to have four days off as well for anyone that doesn't know the hours of placement so it's 12 hour shifts you only do three shifts a week because it's 12 hours so you get four days off every fourth week you have to do an extra shift to make up the hours and that fourth week is a killer because four long days in a week is just it's a lot let's put it that way but you know what it's it's amazing you do get four days off so you can relax you can recharge you can chill out and I've got no assignments to do I've got no exams left so I can take that time to really concentrate on myself and take that self-care so I'm excited so I've waffled on for ages I'm so sorry this is what happens I just talk I don't script my vlogs I literally just talk at you all I'm gonna stop talking now I'm sorry I'm gonna stop talking and thank you for reaching to the end of this if you've reached the end of this if you haven't you're gonna miss this message so don't worry about it but thank you so much for watching and I shall see you all next week