Categories: nursing
Date: 22 November 2006 22:14:27
I've just finished watching the fly-on-the-wall documentary called The Brain Hospital (it looks like it's a series, as it's on next week too), about the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London. I really wanted to see it, even though I don't usually watch this sort of thing as I figured I got enough of it in real life, as when I was a final year student nurse I had my best placement at NHNN, 3 months on a neuromedical ward. In fact the ward wanted me to work there when I qualified, and I was very tempted, as it was an absolutely fascinating area to work in, but I chose not to in the end as their shift times and the fact that it was a bit further away than the hospital I eventually ended up working at meant that commuting would have been a nightmare and I would have spent the whole time at work (in the end I worked somewhere a bit more central and which did long days instead of early and late shifts). I was wondering if I'd see any nurses I recognised, and although it concentrated largely on the patients and surgeons (I only ever did one day on one of the surgical wards), the Parkinsons Disease specialist nurse was someone I recognised, as she had been a staff nurse on my placement ward when I was there. I was really pleased to see her doing so well, I remember she was such a good nurse (as were all of the staff there - it was exceptionally good as a student placement as all of the staff were so great).
It got me thinking a lot though about my career choices. As you all know I'm having something of an extended break from nursing/health visiting while I do the PhD, which is a choice I'm really glad I've made, and after some conversations with fellow students today and after a bit of a breakthrough in my thinking I'm currently feeling pretty motivated about what I'm doing. But there are times when I miss clinical work, and seeing how the patients were affected by their treatment made me remember that clinical work *can* be so rewarding and world-changing. I think it's good that I'm having a break - after a while I got a bit cynical and rolly-eyed about moany patients and nutty colleagues and all that sort of thing, so I think having some time out with just occasional days here and there doing clinical stuff will be good for me, to recharge my batteries and remind me that the things I miss are, maybe, worth going back to sometime.