Must have been a lack of competition

Well bugger me! I got the job.

I checked my mobile yesterday and realised that the nice lady who interviewed me had left a message a few hours after I left. This message had been there for two days (More cringing) so I don't know what they must think of me.

Of course, I now can't imagine how I am going to manage it because I have also agreed to do some hours in the tampon factory too (I don't actually make the tampons, I help to look after the people that do) and also to do a few hours a week in my lovely welding factory (Demoted to doing the filing, in a room with no windows)

Am still very calm and wandering why I am not hysterical and running around the factory, beating my chest in anguish. Still time though.......

I start on the medicine course in four days time and from them on this blog is going to be a barrel of laughs as I winge and moan my way though the course. With this in mind, I am going to tell you a bit about myself so if you are not interested, come back next week and I promise the posts will then be about life at medical school.

I have realised that in my last post, I placed my husband under my dogs in my list of important things. This is not good, but can you blame me - look at them:




Kings Charles Cavaliers come in four shades and I have three of them. I really want the fourth (A Blenheim) but my husband has banned me (He is far enough down my list as it is)

We have had cavaliers since I was five years old and I love them so much that every time one has died, we have been so cut up that we have sworn never to have another one again. Then a few weeks have gone by and we have gotten so depressed that we have gone out and bought another one. I lost my last two from heart failure (Very close to each other) seven years ago and three weeks later we ended up buying three more. My husband was never a dog person but is now just as bad as me and I can safely say that we have the three happiest dogs I have ever met. They are our babies and are clever enough to realise that if real babies were to come along their reign would end. To ensure that this never happens, they like to come to bed and three dogs and two people do not, a happy bed, make.

We alternate through the night between two beds, trying to get away from them, but they are never far behind - Victoria would be horrified

A Strange Week......

This is my last full week of work and it feels very strange. I am one of those boring people who hates trying new things and loves routine and I have got up the same time, gone to the same job and got home the same time every working day for ten years. Although my title still has the word "Nurse" in it somewhere, my job is office based in a large manufacturing mill which makes toilet rolls and tampons (Rock and Roll)

My new life is going to be a challenge (Hmmm - Understatement) and I just can't imagine not having to go to my two jobs anymore. In fact, I would have thought that I would be a hysterical wreck this week, but I have been strangely calm. I think this is denial! Wait for the weeping, wailing post next week.





GOODBYE OFFICE MATES!




I have told very few people that I am leaving so I'm happily wandering along telling everyone that I will see them next week. My reasons for not telling people is the denial thing but also that I am worried about what people will think of me. I have this horrible feeling that I am not going to belong anywhere - the nurses will think I have decided I am too good for nursing (Absolutely untrue) and the doctors will think I am this nurse who has ideas above her station. I also think that what I am doing is quite unusual ( I don't know any nurses who became doctors) and so as people are finding out, I am finding that they all have a viewpoint. I have so many doubts about what I am doing (Leaving my sick dad, dogs, husband, secure job) that I don't need to hear anyone else's doubts. Phew - getting a bit deep and meaningful there!

On a lighter note, I am looking for a little job to help out the money side of things and went for an interview yesterday with a local GP "Out of hours" centre. WHAT A NIGHTMARE! I got lost and so arrived a little late. As soon as I arrived, they gave me a card and told me to sit down for ten minutes and read it through. The card read:

"Mr Jones 72 rings you up at 1145 on a Friday night to say he has had abdo pain for 72 hours which is now getting worse"

1. What clinical history would you take?
2. What treatment would you recommend i.e. Does he need to be seen?

Looking at this now, it looks very straightforward but after trawling in my car for an hour and a half, my head was spinning. My first thought was "They think I am coming for the doctors job, not the nurses job" My second was to bolt for the door but it had a keypad lock on it so there was no escaping! (I had an Ally McBeal moment, imagining me smashing the door down with a fire extinguisher)

You know sometimes when you have had a cringeworthy experience and you get flashes of what you said, coming back over the next few days? That is where I am at now. I absolutely sucked!

They asked me what my differential diagnosis would be (I bit my lip to stop myself from saying that I would ask the nearest doctor) They then asked me what I knew about the medical centre where I wanted to work - which is called "Flintdoc". I had not done my homework and so actually knew very little apart from that this was where you telephoned when your GP had gone home for the day. Instead of smiling sweetly and admitting this, I came up with the answer of all answers....."The centre supports the community of Flint" CRINGE.....

What should a mature medical student worry about? Bloody everything!

I am worrying about everything this week. My top ten worries are:

1. Where is the money going to come from?
2. Am I mad, leaving my jobs? (Will I regret giving them up and leaving my lovely boss?)
3. Will my husband be able to put up with my new life? I am going to be away for at least three nights a week.
4. Where is the money going to come from?
5. Am I clever enough to do this course? (I am not a boffin)
6. Will my dad be OK? (See earlier posts)
7. Will I hate living in halls of residence and find it hard to live with 17yr olds?
8. Will I be accepted by doctors? (I have already had some comments from doctors along the lines of "GEP medicine isn't as rigorous as normal medicine" "The training isn't what it used to be" "You must be bloody mad - go and be a dentist" and the comment of all comments from a consultant who has worked with me for ten years....."Aren't you a bit thick to be going into medicine?" Cheers mate!
9. Will nurses hate me? I worry about this so much that I have hardly told a soul that I am going to do medicine!
10. Where is the money going to come from?!!

"We used to have a doctor, but now the Nurse IS the doctor!"

Occupational health is a lovely area to work in.

At least it used to be in the old days when nurses did their work and doctors did theirs. Somewhere along the way, the managers realised that OH nurses could do much more of the doctor's role than they had previously realised.

I remember one of my first jobs in 1996 in Bromborough. I was sent to do a days work performing lung function tests on employees exposed to flour dust. When I arrived, a lovely old GP (He was 76 years old) met me and had a bit of a moan that I hadn't got there a bit earlier so that I could make him a cup of tea before the patients arrived.

As the day progressed I did the lung function tests and sent the employees through to the doctor with the results. I wasn't allowed to interpret the results (God forbid that a nurse could do this!)

Ok...I know this is very old fashioned and that most of the employees did not need to see the doc with their lung function results. Around 90% of them were normal and I could have dealt with these perfectly well. However, the employees went back to work pleased as punch that they had seen a doc and the managers were happy that their money had been well spent.

Fast forward 10 years and we have gone from one extreme to the other. I did a shift in the Midlands a few weeks ago. When I arrived I was given a list of people on sickness absence to contact. I called them at home and spent a long time on the phone with each of them. Many had complex illnesses, the details of which I struggled with. I had to use the Internet to look some of the details up whilst I was on the phone to the employees so as not to sound as though I didn't have a clue, and to be able to advise whether the new drugs they had been prescribed would render them unable to drive and affect their ability to do their job.

By the end of the day, the managers wanted a report from me, detailing how long these people were going to be off, if they were likely to come under the DDA etc:

I found this difficult because in my other jobs, this is the doctors’ role, not mine. As a nurse I was never taught these disease processes in such depth as to be able to now estimate likely times of recovery. I am good at my job - I have a degree in OH nursing and eleven years full time experience, but I have always worked with a doctor. I asked the company if they had a doctor and they looked blank and said that they used to have a doctor, but "The nurse is now the doctor"

I am lucky in that I have worked with an excellent OH consultant during the past ten years and when I was writing my reports to the managers, I visualised what he would have said in the same situation. I managed to complete the reports and did a reasonably good job. The off shoot of this is that the penny pinching managers have won! They saved hundreds of pounds by using me rather than a doc and I was stupid enough to do the work that they wanted to a good enough standard for what they needed. I should have looked at them like they had two heads and said "Actually mate, this is the docs job"

I know that many of my OH colleagues would criticize my views on this, but I am appalled that we are now doing the doctor's jobs. If for one minute I thought that we were being given these new roles because they thought we were an amazing group of nurses I would perhaps put a sock in it, but lets be honest here - IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY!!

I cost £25 per hour. The doc costs £150 per hour. Easy maths. I agree that we can do much of the OH role but I also know where my competency ends and when to look to a doctor for advice.

My big worry is that when I have qualified as a doctor, I might well want to come back to occupational health. By then though, there is a good chance that all the docs will have been replaced by nurses.