Who has a career plan? When I look back at my nursing career I can't believe the twists and turns it has taken.
When I first started I was told at interview I'd make a good nurse manager. I was horrified! I said I never wanted to be anything other than a hands on clinical nurse. I honestly didn't have any ambition other than to complete my training and to work with patients. I never had a career plan. I never dreamt I'd be here,where I am today.
Of course looking back,I'm exactly where I said I would be. I am a Nurse Practitioner. I am predominantly clinical but my role is extended or advanced or however you want to think of it. I can prescribe and diagnose and can work with a fair amount of autonomy. I never, ever dreamt this is where my career would take me. I never had a plan.
I live and work in Australia. I was born and bred in the North East of England. I trained in a tertiary hospital( or group of hospitals) that became a NHS Trust.We were trained under a scheme that aimed to bridge the gap between hospital based training and university training. When I started in 1994 there was no option to get a degree in nursing. The concept was fairly new and was highly suspicious to us. Everyone suspected hospital based training was best(!) and that you couldn't get real,proper experience in a University.Everyone was highly suspicious!Now everyone is Uni trained and we have amazing nurses from this training too.
Luckily we didn't have to wear hats or capes but we did have a pristine 'A' line white dress to wear. We had black shoes and 'skin coloured' tights. I remember being terrified of the 'old fashioned' matrons who patrolled the corridors and tore strips into you for daring to breath the wrong way! There were some dragons.
I think my training was excellent. We had lectures in Uni but had blocks of prac on the wards. We worked shift work along side a mentor and we were lectured by academics.We were largely prepared for the hard graft of hospital/ward nursing and most definitely got our hands dirty,so to speak.One of my mentors held my hand and cried alongside me when I nursed a little girl dying of a brain tumour. She came to the funeral on her day off and guided me through one of the hardest things I had witnessed as a sheltered 19 year old.From the very beginning I had to learn the fine balance between feeling the pain and heart break of death(especially of a child) and being able to be a professional,competent nurse.
My first real job after graduating was on a Paediatric Emergency and Assessment Unit. This was just at the start of the thinking that children should be cared for in specialised Children's Emergencies and be separate from adults in the UK.We were trying to be an Emergency Department and Day Unit rolled into one. It was an amazing place to start. I learnt how to take bloods,insert catheters and NG tubes. I learnt how to assess sick kids,run through fluids,prioritise care and participate in resus's. I learnt early on in my career what it means to 'have no beds',to have no-where to put a patient needing specialised care. I learnt how to triage patients without having the set of guidelines we have now. I learnt to use both subjective and objective assessment skills.
I also had my first experience of seeing a child die right before my eyes. Pre-vaccination,meningicoccal septicaemia was a real threat and I watched a child die from this terrible,devastating illness. A little boy who came in with a fever and a rash and never went home.I learnt how to hide in the linen cupboard and cry before going out once again to 'pick up' the next patient and carry on making them feel like their child was the most important patient in the world.
It was baptism by fire! These early experiences have defined my career and informed the type of person and nurse I am today. They have allowed me to 'roll with the punches' so to speak. I matured beyond my years and saw things no 21 year old should probably ever see.
My choice to move on to the Paediatric Oncology Ward was a bold one and one that almost ended my nursing career early.
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