Category: Nursing
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Alternative Health, Wellness and Me
I was immediately drawn to the Alternative Health and Wellness (AHW) world on emigrating to Australia in 1995
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A Shift On Women’s Surgical Ward
When bodies falter, nurses have a ringside seat, give care to all, to strangers. Who will the strangers be? Someone’s mum, auntie, brother, cousin, sister, uncle, granny, grandpa. They never know. This shift begins with bedside handover. First woman, large ovarian cancer removed the day before. Eye contact, smile, ID check, note her skin colour,…
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Learning To Be A Nurse Glasgow 1983
I’m from a family of nurses going way back. Great auntie Evelyn nursed in London during WW2. Great Auntie Jean was a “Call The Midwife” helping women birth at home, day and night in 1950’s Greenock, Scotland. Three of dads sisters were nurses and my own mum a community district nurse. Watching her leave home…
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The Night Shift
1988. Glasgow Royal Infirmary, young lad, drunk, “get tae fk, get aff me ya bastards!” face slashed (bottle/knife?) skin flapping, pinned down by police and porters, blood spraying up the curtains, on the docs white coat. “Keep still!!” My job, apply pressure (try not to get stitched to mental boy in the process) fingers scarily…
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Chapter 12. Womens Theatre
We take modern surgery for granted. Anaesthetists render us unconscious, surgeons make deft incisions, cauterise, snip, scrape, biopsy, repair. We wake without remembering a thing. A miracle of modern medicine. Not a miracle of course but the result of many highly qualified individuals coming together, an array of pharmaceuticals, specialized equipment and instruments. I often…
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Another Day At The Office
Recently had the delightful task in the postnatal ward of weighing the newborn babies going home Wheeling them to the scales one at a time in fish bowl hospital cots Quickly, gently, wrangling them out of clothes and nappy Talking to them , shushing them, apologising for ma cold hands Placing them atop the scales…
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A Shift In The ED
Nurses learn to navigate the back and forth between the world of hospital and the world of everyday norms, one minute dealing with intense human vulnerability the next heading home to family, to the normal domestic routine. We learn to make the switch (hopefully), not bring work home, out of head onto paper helps me…
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Violence
Nurses never know what the next shift will bring, we try to turn up well-rested, caffeinated, ready to hit the ground running.
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We Are Worth It
I wrote this blog in Feb 2022 in the midst of the pandemic while working many shifts in my hospitals COVID ward. Around that time my NSW colleagues had taken strike action due to serious concerns about the quality of care they were able to give. Unacceptable nurse:patient ratios and pay inequity were the major…
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Chapter 14. Team work , respect and kindness
I’m usually calm and professional at work (on the outside anyway) only losing my composure once, with a bully type colleague. The older you get, it’s easier to take these people on, call out the behaviour, never comfortable but important to find your voice when someone is taking the piss. Empathic , tolerant , stoic…
The Midwife/Nurse Hobbyfarmer 