Clinical Placement Week 1

Day 1-5 (Monday 13/08/07 - Friday 17/08/07)

At the moment i'm just so buggered with the internet, as it won't load pages although the wireless network is working and i'm connected.

I wanted to just put down some stuff here, about my clinical placement @ Liverpool Hospital, before I forget about it.

Before stepping out this morning, to leave for my first clinical placement in 4 years, I was quite apprehensive in how my son will cope with me gone for so long. You see, I've never left him for more than 3-4 hours, in today's case was 9.5 hours (0630-1600). I guess it's normal for mothers to worry about their child like that, especially with the first one.

However, I was SOOOOO excited to put on the uniform once again and head out to the real world, where others are in worse shape than I am. It only took me 15 minutes max. to get there and alhamdulillah I arrived on time. We were all waiting @ the main entrance for our facilitators to come and collect us and go through the usual checks and information (as per usual with clinical placements). There were 9 girls in my group but 1 person didn't turn up at all, which could turn out to be a negative thing on their behalf. Nevertheless, we proceeded.
I got placed in a complex Endocrine ward (AG 2 West) which included fields such as: gastrointestinal, aged care & mostly some diabetic patients. There others went to Renal and Respiratory wards.

The history of the patients that I was teamed up with had so many broad and diverse history. Honestly, I was shocked to see a young girl of 19 years in one of those rooms. I looked up @ the hand-over sheet to find that she was newly diagnosed with Diabetes. Subhanallah, our faith are tested at any time and any way that Allah wills. The other patients were pretty much elderly.

The first drama of the day happened while I watched 2 nurses helping a slightly immobile patient into a shower chair. Keep in mind that this patient is incontinent of urine AND faeces (i'm sure you know what that means). As soon as they got her (the patient) onto the chair, she urinated on the floor enough to make a fish pond! Oh well, stuff like that happens all the time in Nursing. All you can say is: "Oh no! She thinks she's on the toilet". Afterwards, having the nurse shower and dress her, she pooped out a little nugget just under the seat while the nurse and I were helping her into her chair! Oh boyy...they reminded me of my early days of clinical. We've got the morning shift for THE WHOLE 2 WEEKS, which means getting there BY 7am. By the end of the day, I couldn't really concentrate in debriefing with Nicki (our facilitator), 'cuz my feet were REALLY hurting - Nurses don't get to sit down for most of the shift - and plus I wanted to head straight home to my little boy.

Speaking of Abdurrahman; he's cheekier than ever now! Alhamdulillah he's able to copy our actions and say some words that I tought him such as: "Ma", "Diddi" (which is 'daddy'), "Om" (to call my brothers, which means 'uncle'), "Ummi" (grandma, to call my mum), "Buu" (grandpa, to call my dad), "Nene" (another grandma, to call my mother-in-law), "Kah" ('car'), "Bes" ('bus'), "Bye", "Uh-oh". Subhanallah, babies are so smart! Oh! He's also growing 6 more teeth simultaneously.

Ok, that'll be all for now. Got an early start from now on, until the end of next week :(

~Peace.