Protect the NHS

Happy New Year to everyone.

2020 was hard year with the pandemic but it not over yet. It more important now more than ever to protect our NHS during wave 2. The government in the UK has been slow on the up take, always seeming to be one step behind or plain ignore the advice from SAGE. The NHS is overwhelmed!

Winter is always difficult. We busy and full with flu or other winter virus that can make our vulnerable and elderly population extremely sick. This year on top of these normal winter pressures we have covid. I would in ED in London as a nurse we stretched, we understaffed and overwhelmed by the amount of people.

Part of this is due to space. As per government guidance we are social distancing patients as best of possible in all areas as we won’t know who A-symptomatic with covid and who covid free and if possible would like to prevent people without covid getting it. What does this mean to the public? Your probably use to scene of patient lining the corridors of emergency departments up and down the country, double park and all, waiting rooms with more people than chairs. At present we are not allowed to do any of this, in waiting room patient need at least 2 chairs between them, no patient in corridor unless we are completely stuck. The other issue to do with space most emergency departments are dealing with is where to put our covid area and where to put the non-covid area and how to split this space. In the first wave when we went into lock especially most non-covid patient stopped come to ED so we could use our main department for covid and response ward space (normal just the one) for non-covid patients, this wave people are not staying away, meaning people that could wait for GPs or go to walk in are still attending emergency departments. People are still going out which can lead to accidents. I work in ED for 2 years now, this is the busiest I seen it, some of my colleagues who have been ED nurse for 4-10 years have also never seen the department like this.

We are seeing what covid does to all age range of patient. Someone said to me that it only elderly and vulnerable people who are getting really sick with covid, this is not true. Listen to me now I had lots of normally fit and well 30 to 50 year old who now need oxygen, it not just about protecting the elderly or vulnerable, anyone can get really sick and need ICU from it. We still don’t understand why this happens to some and not others.

A lot of my colleagues are breaking point, we anxious and stressed, worried about take covid home to family, stressed due to being understaffed and knowing that most of our shift at present will be awful for one reason or another. Mental health charities are reporting larger number of health care worker using hotline and helpline as they as overwhelmed with work. The NHS is at breaking point, we have no space left in the hospital and staff are burning out, if we not careful we will lose one of the best things about the UK and it won’t be because the Tories took it apart.

Now to you. How can the general public protect the NHS? Follow guidance from the government. STAY AT HOME! Simple! Don’t meet another household on a walk and if you do social distance. If you can work from home do.  Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay away from others. Do not break the rules because it a special occasion, (we expecting a spike in case from Christmas and new year over the next 2 weeks), we know you miss your families so do we. If we went by the rules and the government forced isolation when come to the country, we could be sitting pretty like New Zealand right about now but we not.

My only other piece of advice is to get vaccinated. You can not get the virus from any vaccination in the first place, the covid vaccinate the American one is not even the virus its protein instruction and the oxford one is a dead virus. It is safe! No, it’s not got a tracker in it, your not that interesting to be tracked also your phone works much better as a tracker than anything they could put in the vaccinate. Lastly if you want the world to return to any kind of previous normal, we need to control the virus and a vaccinate is the best way for that.

If we don’t do these simple things we won’t have an NHS left to help look after once the pandemic is behind us. Please protect your love one by following the rules. Please protect our beloved NHS by following the rules and only going to the hospital if it is an emerngcy.

Protect the NHS. Stay home. Wear a Mask. Wash your hands. Social distance. Get vaccinated! I will be.

Self care

It been on my mind a lot recently. Due to the current pandemic we all been under a lot of stress as our normal life have been turn up side down. Being stuck in the house more than normal. I know people who are house cat by nature and have also struggled because they like the option to go outside. Self-care means different things to different people and none of them are really wrong. (Unless it self destructive)

In my early 20’s I thought self care was a face mask, wine and catch up with a film with the girls. This in some way is and it help you recharge your social batteries and relax a bit. Now I see self care as going for a run, doing my journal, mediating and reading a good book. Things that help both my body and mind.

I also think in this time of a pandemics where we can’t unwind with our coworkers or friends by going shopping or going for a drink/dinner in nice to find things that we can do within our home to make sure we keep ourself health both mentally and physically. I know it not the same, nothing replaces talking through something or having a laugh with people that you love. Zoom/discord/house party will never replace that human touch, it does take the edge off though.

I think pressure has been a huge problem for people this year, with working from home for a lot of people or being furloughed people have felt a huge amount of pressure to get fit, learn something or sort there life. Even as someone who has worked through the pandemic due to my job I still felt the same pressure. It okay just to survive, we don’t need to come out of this as brand new better people.

I released today that I have been trying to change all of these things such as my diet, how much I exercise, journaling and meditation, learning piano, writing more and learning Germany all in the same 10 days off I had. That is so much to do. Also due to being a nurse in the pandemic I have been burnt out and stressed, adding this extra pressure to do all these things that in the long run will be good for me , may not happen if I try to do it all at once.

By trying to do all these things at once just will lead to failure making you feel flat and like you will never achieve the life you want. We need to cut ourselves a break and take it one day at a time. We need to know that we are human and are not made to be inside 247 or to be alone.

Remember to love yourself and to look after yourself.

This will all get better. Just keep the faith

What do I wanna be? A writer maybe

I did some reading today about how to become a writer, it been something i been interested in for a little while. Some my nursing friends and I were wondering what else we do with our life’s if we weren’t nurses, my answer is always some more creative but i am not a great drawer or anything like that, i did mostly creative subject for a-level with 1 science, but then choose a science academic based career. I though about it lot recently and I think I would like to write, but there is that little voice in my head that says your writing no good and you would suck at that a) cause my self confident has alway been low and b) i am severally dyslexic. I had an example of how bad my dyslexia is the other day I was reading and came across the word tepid, though oh a new word, I’ll google it, read the definition that sounds like something I would know so hit play on the word and then it click, never had to read it before or spell it so never knew.

Back to becoming a writer, the blog i read was very helpful with tip of how to be a writer. The top tip and I heard lots of people recommend this is become a better read. I am a slow reader (the dyslexia probably contribute to this) but I have tried over the last few years to read more so this I will continue to do. Step 2 and 3 stood out for me.

Step 2, write every day. Again I had heard this but hadn’t really taken much thought but it right. I didn’t learn to be a nurse over night, we never learnt how to do multiplication or division straight away, it took practice and time. I always make excuses because I work such long hours as nurse, I don’t always have time everyday, but even just making 5-10 minutes instead of looking through instagram or facebook that could make the difference between getting better or never doing anything with it.

Step 3 was start a blog. Hello, we are here. I always toyed with and tried to start a blog but I have any idea and never follow through or just do the one off post. Part of the tip for this was just to write about anything on your mind, there so many things on my mind right now, from COVID-19 and stress of that working in health care, my in ability to work out what I want to do with my life either as a nurse or something else, my mental and physical health and what I could be doing to make that better, my cute little kitten (she not so little anymore), and the list goes on. So there plenty of things I can write about. I also try to creative write and guess sharping my skills by blogging is one way to make that easier.

I am hoping this blog is the start to me writing about how I feel, my opinions on the world, some information about health as that is my field and me trying find out what I wanna do with my life, but also in the progress becoming better at writing even if the stories I write just end up being for me.

So all being well this is just the beginning.

I copied in the link for how to be a write below if you want to give that blog a read too.

https://www.locationrebel.com/how-to-become-a-writer/

A fresh start

A long time ago (October 2016) I said I was going to write a blog a week and then only wrote two posts. Well I am not going to make any promises to write once a week or anything but I will promise to write more.

I want to start a blog series about mental health and how we need to break the stigma around mental ill health. I am very passionate about this subject due to myself as well as friends and family having issues with there mental health. I also work with a section of nursing at the moment called school health and with this job role I do a lot of 1:1 work with children with mental health issues, some of these children are embarrassed about having worries and anxieties, I hope my work with them should them there nothing to be embarrassed about and we all should help each other feel normal when we are having mental ill health, but children attitude come from the adults around them so we have to help adults to understand this as well.

Along side this mental health series I will probably talk about other things that mean a lot to me or I feel are issues that need to voiced. I will try not to get to much in to politics but things like nurses pay and other subject I am passionate about come under this heading so it may appear somethings.

And as always I do apologise in advance for an spelling errors and grammatical issues, I will try my hardest to keep this to a minimum and my friend has offered to edit my posts but some times the dyslexia gets away from me.

I am hoping to have the first post for my mental health series up in the next few weeks. Almost finished writing it just need it checked by my friend. Hope you like the new stuff that will come to my blog this year.

I am on the right path, what next?

I have always been the girl with the plan. Since I was 6 I always knew what I wanted to do. It changed a few time as children do what I always wanted be something medical. When I was 6, I wanted to be a doctor, when I got to secondary school for a little while I wanted be a teacher, but then went back to be wanting to be a paramedic. When I got to 16 I wanted to be something cool, and to me my dad was the coolest so I wanted to be a sound and light engineer. But again I went back to wanting to be a paramedic or nurse. In the end I settled on nursing. I looked at university, and was dead set on it.

My a-levels were not great due to lack of support at school, but luck had it I got into university anyway. I completed my 3 years training with some good time, some very stressful times and some bad times, and came out with 2:1 in adult nursing.

Since I qualify I have had 3 different jobs in 2 years. I first worked on an acute admission unit, busy, stressful; it always felt more like I was pushing beds then caring for patients. It was always more important to move the patient to the ward and get your next one from A&E so that A&E did not get blocked and they could get the next person off the ambulance. Which of course is important but it never felt I was caring for patients the way I wanted to, so I moved on.

As a student I always wanted to work in the acute section, I did A&E as a placement and loved it but I always wanted to try to work on critical care. So off I went to critical care. The unit I work on was a big unit, 35 beds, 11 of them side rooms. The team I worked with was very supportive and helpful. It was a great working environment. The problem with CCU was your looking after the sickest of the sick, yes this can be very rewarding but it can always be very depressing. We got a lot of cancer patient on our unit and some people never recovered, you work so hard to try and get these people well again but despite all the hard of the team and yourself they still pass away. I found working there very hard for this reason. It was stressful and depressing. The people I worked with are brilliant and great at their job but that job was not for the one for me.

Now I moved on to working in the community, I now work as part of the district nurse time as a community staff nurse. I prefer this job, enjoying it more than I enjoy AAU and CCU; but with all of these jobs I had the feeling that I was not quite in it, maybe bored in some way. I am very passion about nursing, my work and helping others, but there must be other ways to do it other than killing yourself to do it. None of the places I worked including now was fully staff; the workload kept getting heavy and the quite period that use to happen around the summer time rarely seen anymore. With no reward for the nurses that stick it out and more leaving because of burn out and stress.

Now I find myself wondering if I have pick the correct career for myself. Should I have done something more creative? Or done something that helps people in a different way, where I did not feel like I am killing myself do so. I am now not sure I have a plan. Do I want to forge a path in this career?

I have been thinking about changing career path to one of my other passion. Do more writing or an internship in photography, or look at teaching.  There some many different things I could do. I guess I am saying I don’t know what next, and that scares me a lot.

My First Post

For the last few days since I signed up I have been contemplating what to say in my first post. I wanted to tell you all about the exciting thing I will post, my interests and my idea, but I didn’t know how to put into words. Then today it came to me while out for my run.

My blog posts will be about my creative ideas and  writing, my passion including nursing, science, photography and so much more, I also want to write about what it like to be dyslexia and dealing with it. I want to sure opinion and much more. I want to show you a little about myself and have your thoughts as well.

I am hoping this page will be interesting and sometimes informative. Feedback is welcome as well. I am hoping to do at least a piece a week. Looking forward to writing for you. Until next time!