 Happy Monday everybody. So it is a brand new week. It is Monday. It is 5 a.m. I will never get used to this time for placements. It's a brand new week. I'm in today. I'm off tomorrow. I've got our live Q&A vlog tomorrow. By the time you watch this it will be posted and up and have a look at that because I'm fingers crossed it's gonna be a good one. And then Wednesday, Thursday I'm back on placement and then I'm off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Long weekend for the Easter holidays. I know. I've always worked the Easter holidays or I've been on placement so it's gonna be really nice to have four days off over the Easter holidays finally. So yeah, so it's gonna be really nice. So let's see how today goes and I shall see you all later on. So we are now on week four of placement and I've got five weeks left. This week has been really busy. So this week I've done my usual drug rounds. I've helped patients get ready. I've been assisting at mealtimes. I have done no wound dressings this time. I've done some catheters and fluid balances. I've done some assessments. I've done discharge forms. All the usual things that I've done before and mentioned previously in my previous vlogs but there's been a few things that have happened this week that I really want to talk about in this particular vlog. So this week on placement I've had a semi-newish mentor because my current mentor has been on holiday and then they've been off sick and this is something that might happen to you if you're out on placement. You might have a swap of mentor and you might get a little bit disheartened by it but please don't be. It's just one of those things that happen. So my new mentor is amazing. She's so fantastic. She's knowledgeable. She loves teaching students and you can see that. You can see the passion shining her when she's speaking and when she's teaching me things and when she's showing me things and she's always like come and do this, come and do that. She's just absolutely fantastic. I cannot fault her at all. She's amazing. So the first thing that I did was I actually helped fill out a DATEX incident report. Something happened on placement not with me but it was to do with the patient and the relatives and things and DATEX incident form had to be put in because of it and I've never actually done this before. I've heard people do it and some things have happened in past placements and we've had to do it but I've never actually helped fill it out so I sat with one of the nurses and I helped her fill it out because it was all on the computer system and I'm quite a fast type. She was like can you help me with this? I was like okay let's do it. So I did that and it was really interesting to see how you fill out a DATEX incident report and all of the information that goes on that and how important it is to be clear and concise and things like that on the reports and yeah so that was really interesting. That's one thing that I did and anything I do that's new is absolutely amazing and I love it. The next thing that happened so I can't go into too much detail about this particular incident because of confidentiality but I'm just going to try and work around it so that I'm not giving away confidentiality but I want to tell you the importance of what this is and raise some awareness around it just in case it happens to you when you're out in placement. So sometimes you will have patients or a patient or many patients. I think this is quite a common thing that happens across the board. I've seen that happen a few times but sometimes a patient will be under your care in the hospital setting or care home setting wherever you are wherever you're based and they need a higher level of care when they are discharged from your services. So they will put in a package of care referral form, they will get the social workers involved, they'll get the CCGs for continuing health care, they'll be involved all of that to try and get funding for this patient or to see if this patient is eligible for funding to get carers come home or if they need to go into a care home or something like that. So we had a patient who needed that extra level of care so the social workers did all the bits and things and they decided that okay this patient needs some help but it's not to the point where they need to go into a nursing home or a care home. So this patient needed just the extra level of care so they wanted to put a package of care in place so to increase carers to the house visits to help them in their own home and this is what the patient wanted. The patient didn't want to go into a care home. The patient wanted to stay at home in a own little home and the social workers, OTs, physios, everybody that's assessing this patient also agreed. So they just wanted some extra help to go into the home with their medications, things like that and that was fine. However, sometimes the relatives see a completely different side of things and they sort of worry and I think they get a bit anxious about this and they I mean they just want the best for their relative. So from their point of view, they might want whichever patient you've got that this might happen to. They might want this particular relative to go into a nursing home or to go into a care home and not because they want to sell a house or financial is nothing to do with that or anything. Sometimes they just want the best care possible because from their point of view they're seeing their relative deteriorate and they need that extra help and they're panicking because what if something happens when they're at home alone when the carers aren't there and there's nobody there to help. So they're worried about that side of things. So they will be sometimes very anxious, very angry. They will want answers. They'll want to know why you've made that decision. They will want to know every single detail or how you've come to that decision and no matter what you say, they're going to be angry and it's because they love their relative and they want that care. It's nothing else. I mean, sometimes there are safeguarding things involved and you have to get the safeguarding team because sometimes there is an ulterior motive behind it. So you have to watch out for those warning signs. But in this case, I don't think it was a safeguarding. So the relatives were just worried, I think, and understandably as well. And so we had to deal with that. We had to deal with the families and we had to calm down the family. We had to speak with the families. Make sure those communication skills that we've learned at university are in place to keep it calm, keep it relaxed and reassure that patient's family member. But unfortunately, in this particular instance, the family members really weren't happy. They're really angry about it. But everything that from what I could see from the nurses side, social workers, physios, OTs, assessment, everything has been done is been fantastic. So I'm not too sure where that's going to go. But just to make you aware, you might get that situation. So you might get families and relatives angry with the decision that you've made or the doctors made or anybody that's involved in that care of that patient has been made. They might get a little bit funny about it and you're going to be on the back end of it. Luckily, I wasn't on the back end of it. I was just sat there and I sort of witnessed it. I had to do the reassuring the patient afterwards and stuff because the patient got quite upset about it afterwards. I had to reassure that patient and be there for them. And I did get a little bit worried about it because the patient was so upset about some things that had been said. I did get worried about it. So I had to report back to my mentor. I actually reported it to three different people because I wasn't happy with what was going on and I was really a little bit upset myself and I went home thinking about this particular patient. So I just wanted to clarify some things and put my sort of point across as well to see what they would say. But everything's fine and everything's been documented or everything in the notes has been documented. And luckily, it's all right. We're all right. Everything's settled and it's fine. But I just wanted to make you aware that sometimes you will have somebody upset and you're going to have to be that person that reassures them and sort of double checks everything out and make sure everything safe and sound and all of that jazz. I hope that makes sense. I'm trying to not say as much because of confidentiality like I said. So I hope it makes sense and I hope you can get something from that and just make you aware that you might deal with something like that whilst you're out on placement without even realizing it. If you have had a situation happen and you've dealt with it, comment below. Let me know. See what sort of things you did out in practice. It'd be really interesting to see what sort of things everybody else does. So let me know. And then the final thing I want to speak to you about is medication errors because yesterday, I'm going to say this because I am an open honest. That's the person I am. I am open and honest and I want people to be aware of what they're doing with medications because we are student nurses. We can still be thrown off this course for doing errors even though we are protected in a certain way. But if we make a big, big mistake, we're going to be off. So yesterday, I was doing a drug round with my mentor and I had in where I work is all paper based. There's no computer system. I've always worked on computer systems. So the whole paper system sort of threw me. So I had my paper, I went through the drugs for a particular patient, opened the meds cupboard because every patient on this particular ward has their own cupboard with their very own drugs in. Whereas on other wards, we've had a big trolley with every single drug and you just take whatever you need for each patient. But each patient has their own medications in their own cupboard and we just have the sheet to go by. So I was going through the sheet and I was like, okay, so this patient needs this, this, this, okay, open the cupboard. I was like, hang on. None of these drugs are in the cupboard. What's going on? This is really strange. So then I looked at the chart again. I was like, yeah, this drug, this drug, looked in the cupboard again. I was like, there's nothing here. And then I looked at my mentor's like, there's nothing here. I don't know what's going on. So then when I rechecked my drug charts, you know, the five R's, right patient, number one, was it the right patient? No. On my paper, it was a different patient. So I was looking at different patients drug charts, but in the cupboard, obviously it's not going to correspond because it's different medications, different patients. And I was just like, oh my God. And I was genuinely, genuinely mortified. Luckily nothing happened. I didn't give any medication. I didn't get any medication ready. But I went through my five R's to check, okay, right patient, let's check the drug chart. Name is a different name. Oh my God. So luckily, I think the way this set particular setting works well because the patient has her own drug cupboard and they have their own drug chart. So in this instance, it was alright. But imagine if I was on a hospital ward where you've got the big trolleys full of every medication, I would have been getting all those medications out the trolley ready to give to the patient. And then I've just dispensed those medications then. So technically that would have been a drug error if that was back on a ward because I've dispensed all of those medications and I would have had to chuck them because that wasn't for that patient. So luckily nothing happened. There was nothing that happened. I didn't give any medications. I've managed to save that drug error from actually happening. But I wanted to just be open and honest about it in a vlog and it's really opened my eyes to actually how simple it is to make a simple, simple drug error. And I wasn't even in a rush. We went in a rush. We were calm. It was quiet. There was no distractions and just something so simple like that. I just went over my head and it's maybe really panic now. So I am from next week onwards. I'm going to be going through my five hours. Okay. First patient documentation. Is it the right patient? Yes. Okay. Drugs. Drug chart. Is it the right patient? Yes. Check the wristband. I mean we check the wristbands anyway. And I think if something like that happened on the ward, naturally I would have dispensed the medication. I would have checked the patient's wristband and then I would have realised actually this isn't corresponding to the patient notes to the patient. And that's the point. So I think that would have been prevented. But I just wanted to make it aware to you that it's really, really easy to make a drug error. And that really scared me because I'm quite observant. I'm really organised and all of that. So if that can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. And it was, it felt horrendous. I mean nothing even happened. But it felt horrendous for me to even think that I could have made that mistake and that could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. And I could have been up against the NMC. I'm a pin could have been gone before I've even got it. I'm brief. So just learning from that and reflecting upon that I need to be more vigilant and I need to be checking, double checking, triple checking. And yeah, and be open and honest about it if something does happen in the future. But nothing's going to happen because I'm aware of it now. More aware of it than I was before. What else happened out on placement? I think that was it. That's the three main points that sort of come to light these three days. But it's been so, so busy. We've had admissions, we've had discharges, we've had all of the events go on that's happened. Or I did a social effort. I did a social worker referral form. I have never done a social worker referral before. So it was really interesting to do that social worker referral. And it was just a new thing again, a new piece of documentation that I haven't done that I can put in my book as an extra thing that I've done. I love it when I do something new as a student nurse. It's amazing. So that is it from me. I shall see you all next week. Have an amazing week. I hope you've had a great bank holiday and see you next week.