Placement- first week

SO!  we've started placement this week for the very first ever time.

My placement is a 9-5 clinic rather than a ward. I am sharing the placement with another girl on my course who, luckily, I have met and spoken to before so we are quite lucky in that we can chat about our placement - good bits, bad bits, help each other out etc. We worked separate days this week and I assume we probably will for the rest of our time there, but I think that's probably a good thing as we get the full focus of our mentors and also there isn't a great deal for us to do so splitting what little there is  wouldn't be very good!

My first day was quite good. I met one of my mentors let's call her Sue, she is really nice, not like super lovely but she's friendly and kind (so far) and seems to genuinely want to help me learn as much as I can. She is really intelligent and competent and I respect her a lot. Obviously I can't reveal much about what I actually did in the day but I basically sat in on clinics, adult in the morning and paediatric in the afternoon. It was a bit overwhelming at first because it is such a specialised area they have a lot of field specific terms and abbreviations that I absolutely did not know which sometimes made things hard to follow but I'm sure I will pick it up as I go along. I was surprised that I actually felt quite comfortable in paediatrics. I have never been a huge fan of kids and they don't tend to like me! But I was actually quite good with them and one even ended up sitting on my knee while the doctor spoke to her mum! It also helped that doctor I was with was really great and actually just spoke to me like we were equals and was really casual and nice.

My second day started off well. I sat in on another clinic and in breaks between patients my mentor was teaching me lots about the area of study and showed me lots of pictures and how to identify different parts and symptoms etc which was really helpful and interesting. However in the afternoon I met my second mentor - let's call her Sam. It's terrible to say this but I instantly disliked her, I think just as a person if I met her in a social situation I would not warm to her which I guess made me feel a bit off. Then she walked me over to the department (across the road into another building so a good 5 minute walk) but just was talking to another nurse about her weekend and didn't acknowledge that I was with her or introduce me to the other nurse. Might sound petty but she had only said the words 'so you're coming over to ___ yeh?' to me so far. She didn't tell me about the department, the clinic, even her name and it just felt a bit rude. Then (again I can't go into much) but she asked me to take a blood pressure using a manual machine which is seldom used anymore and I had said to her before the patient was in that I'd rather she did it first as I wasn't sure on it. When the patient came in she just asked me to do it, I tried to start but was struggling so I said 'Can you walk me through this?' and she just adjusted something on the machine that had been left in the wrong state and said 'it should work now'. So anyway wont go into detail but I ballsed it up a bit and she wasn't helpful in the least. To be honest it wasn't a good day for me personally so it probably bothered me more than it would of any other day but it still wasn't a great start.

Anyway I haven't really got any time to revise this weekend a I'm working a lot (as I have to to survive) so... we'll see how next week goes!!