So, I’ve got used to taking my own patients. I normally have 3-4 of the 6 (I’d take 6, but then the nurse I’m working with would have nothing at all to do). So, today, my mentor sent me off to take the handover for my three patients.
And she came down and I gave her a quick’n’dirty handover expecting to get on with my patients. I was going to ask her advice about one of them – I thought he might need fluids / fluid chart / reviewing. Another patient needed a relative talking to, but I didn’t really worry about telling her that; it was all in my head ready for me to ‘leap’ into action.
But then she started doing stuff. In fact, I did fuck-all-of-value all shift. And I felt like a third bloody thumb. Tomorrow I will be more assertive. I will have my usual quota of patients. But she complained at me for not handing over information regarding the relative who needed speaking to, but… I was going to do it. The whole thing left me feeling useless and frustrated because I didn’t know what she’d done and what needed doing, and so on.
Then I got back to my car – I’d had some difficulties with the seatbelt on the way to work, but I’d managed to get it to work. It now won’t work. Or it will just extend to the length of me-coat-jumper. So tomorrow I get to freeze to death on the way to work; assuming that the seatbelt deigns to extend that far. And the same on Monday. After which instead of getting to come home and write my essay I get to go to Charles Ware’s Mog Centre and complain about the quality of yet another modern part (I’d list the modern parts that’ve failed, but the answer is every single item that’s been replaced has failed several of them more than once; the exception (touch wood) is the waterpump).
