How times have changed.
As I got stuck in to my portfolio today I realised that the fresh faced youngster* who qualified as a nurse back in the days of yore had moved on apace. The course I am gainfully employed in comes more from a social work perspective but it also strikes at the heart of mental health work today. That is, capacity, informed consent to treatment, care and support, and all of the legal paraphernalia associated with it. It's odd though how to get on in this business called show mental health nursing I have to study at ever higher levels and I am further removed from the patient. Happily, the training will enable me to be chucked back in the deep end for lots of assessments and hungry lawyers to chew over. Cue song....



I will also be out of my comfort zone and dealing with dementia, severe learning disabilities and 'not quite suitable for any neat ticky box' cases from April for the following six months. If I think about all of the training and experience I have had over the past twenty plus years:not just the straight forward post grad. nursing courses, but also psychotherapy, addictions, social perspectives, solution focused brief therapy, CBT, counselling, etc...I do wonder where the nurse is and I realise it's at the centre of all of this. Strange to think I applied for training back in '85 because I couldn't find anything else that suited me and I still enjoy the job.
Sadly that is one thing the tosspot politicians just do not get. Committment to the job and a desire to behave and work in a professional manner whilst ensuring the patient is truly helped to get on with their life. Placing ever more hoops to jump through and an emphasis upon money whilst they featherbed their comfortable gold plated lives. No wonder secondhand car salesmen get more respect. But away from the gutter and back to nursing. Happily one of my former students has got her first job after struggling to find work since last autumn. It is only over the past 18 months that I have known newly qualified nurses really struggle to find jobs. There will be shortage of nurses within a few years because the baby boomers are all retiring. So nurses with thirty plus years experience will be heading for the sun and a well earned retirement. There are a lot of complaints about public service pensions: well when we worked for peanuts wiping arses, cleaning up abandoned elderly relatives including those who fought through the original depression and two world wars. When we worked nights struggling with psychotic young men whom the drug dealers had supplied with amphetamines and who were averse to a quiet cup of cocoa and a chat. When we sat in A&E with the young girl who had taken 50 paracetamol and cut her face to ribbons....Quid pro quo: we chose to do the shit jobs for poor wages and often in difficult conditions but the silver lining was a good pension. I feel sorry for the young 'uns (and not so young) who choose to go into nursing now. But if no decent pension, how much is a staff nurse worth? How much is a physio, doctor, OT, radiographer worth. You can lose the nuts to a car but if you lose someone's nuts in theatre? I'll stop now and climb off my soap box.
TTFN.

*Believe that and you'll believe Elvis is still alive and kicking.