I have already been so bad with keeping up to date with my blog! Not very impressive :-/
Anyway, I have so much to blog about but don’t know where to start!
Ok, lets start with my healthcare assistant job.. I just want to say before I carry on talking about my work experiences that I am obviously going to maintain confidentiality and I am not going to mention any real names of patients/people that I talk about on here.
So I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to start a healthcare assistant job. My first shift was last Tuesday on the surgical ward but this first shift (supernumerary shift as they call it) mainly involved shadowing another healthcare assistant in order to give me an insight into the job role and what is expected of me. The healthcare assistant I shadowed was so lovely and as it was a morning shift (7am- 2.30pm) the first thing we did was to strip down and make patient beds. Oh I forgot to mention that before we started making patient beds she also gave me a tour of the ward and showed me the location of the fire exits, sluice, staff room /kitchen.
Luckily the ward wasn’t too busy so after making patient beds we kind of sat around at the nurses station for a bit and chatted with the other nurses whilst answering patient buzzers. One of the student nurses who was 28 (he looked a lot younger though told me that he was planning to study medicine when he finished his nursing training which I found quite inspiring and we had a conversation about studying medicine). At around 10am we emptied the patient catheter bags and recorded the readings on fluid charts. After carrying out various other errands on the ward, we took the patient obs (at around 12pm) which involved measuring blood pressures/oxygen sats/pulse rates/checking if the patient had opened their bowels/taking temperature/checking their blood sugar level if they were diabetic/taking the respiration rate etc. After this we just responded to patient queries and before I knew it, it was time to go home! The shift was over pretty quickly to be honest..
I actually learnt a great deal on this first shift and whilst I was working on my shift there was actually an incident that had taken place with one of the junior doctors and one of the patients on the ward who was HIV+. The patient (lets call her Doris) was very upset and actually had a cry with one of the nurses because Doris (note that this is not the patients real name) had heard one of the junior doctors mentioning how she was HIV+ and how she had to go for a chest X-ray. Doris was upset because she thought that the patient next to her had heard the junior doctor talk about her situation and infact the patient next to her had asked her why she was going for a chest X-ray. So yeah the nurse had to have a word with the junior doctor because there had been an issue of confidentiality and so this incident highlighted to me the issue confidentiality can have and how important it is to maintain confidentiality!
Whilst I was working, one of the clinical support workers on the ward told me how she had obtained a needle stick injury when she had taken blood from a HIV+ patient in the past and how this had made her cautious when taking blood. Luckily she had been given the all clear so yeah the first shift was pretty interesting and made me think a lot...
From then and now I have since worked two shifts as a healthcare assistant. Oh by the way, I don’t think I mentioned that I am infact a bank healthcare assistant so I am based on different wards, it just depends on which wards need extra staff and when I am available. That’s what I like about bank work- the fact that you can work as and when you want (as long as you do one shift within 6 months). So yeah as well as working on the surgical ward, I’ve worked on the labour and elderly ward.
Gosh the elderly ward was lets just say very tough. The shift I did on the elderly ward was actually a one to one with a patient who had dementia. I wasn’t actually made aware that I would be doing a one to one by the nurse bank before I had accepted the shift even though I should have been. So yeah my job for that particular shift was to sit and watch the patient and make sure he didn’t fall or put himself in danger. At first it didn’t seem too bad as the patient was asleep when I had arrived on the ward but once he had woken up, that was it.. he kept on wandering around the wards and entering other patients beds/ entering the nurses office. It was very tiring following him around, and also the fact that he couldn’t communicate made it a very hard task for me. Sometimes he would say ‘Come on!!’ as if he wanted me to answer a question he was asking me but because I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying as his words were all jumbled up I couldn’t really answer him so I mostly responded by nodding and saying yeah and asking him if he was okay. I was thankful that he wasn’t aggressive, he seemed like a lovely chap. It’s such a shame that his dementia was deteriorating so quickly. By the end of the shift I was very tired but I felt a sense of satisfaction in that I had been able to prevent the patient from falling and he seemed to enjoy my company whilst I was with him so I hoped in one way or another that I had brought him happiness....So yeah thats my experiences so far as working as a healthcare assistant.
I also mentioned in my last post that I had an interview for an admin job (casenote services library clerk to be exact) which was on Saturday. Yeah the interview for that went pretty well, it was pretty informal to be fair and they seemed to be looking to take on a large number of people so I was pretty hopeful going in for the interview that I would get the job (this job only lasts until January though). There were about 25 people at the interview and we were given a tour of the casenote library which contained all the patient notes before being led away separately for our interviews.
The woman interviewing me asked me about my work experience and when I’ve had to work in a team and when I was available to work- that’s pretty much it, it wasn’t anything too stressful and lasted pretty much about 5-10 minutes.
I got a call on Monday (four miscalls actually) whilst I was at work and there was a voice message from the person who interviewed me saying that she wanted to discuss my interview with me. I called back on Tuesday as by the time I had finished work it was too late to call her back. When I called back, the woman told me that she wanted to offer me a more permanent role (a year fixed contract) and that they were holding interviews for this permanent role on Wednesday. Of course I said I would come! I didn’t really think much of the upcoming Wednesday interview and expected it to be informal like the interview on Saturday so I didn’t do much preparation for it apart from reading the job description that had been emailed to me and yeah I pretty much went to the interview on Wednesday knowing the job description and what I would say if they asked me why I wanted the job.
To my shock when I arrived on Wednesday there were three people in the room waiting to interview me! I expected one person to be interviewing me like last time and I immediately felt so underprepared when I entered the room. The three women interviewing me seemed nice though and one of them explained the job role and told me that they had invited me back because they were impressed with my interview on Saturday and that a few of the staff were leaving and so they had some permanent positions available. I asked about the Saturday job and whether I had got the job and how it would work and the woman said that if I was unsuccessful with this interview then I would definitely be given the job that I had an interview for on Saturday...so that was great to hear!! Then another woman began questioning me. The questions I have to say where not what I was expecting and really put me on the spot:
From what I can remember they asked me about:
- My work experience (this wasn’t too bad a question)
- A time when I’ve had to problem solve
- The skills that I would bring to a team
- How my friends would describe me/What are my strengths and weaknesses
- A time when I’ve had to say no to somebody
- Whether I have good time management skills
Yeah most of the questions were pretty unexpected for an admin interview hah (but good prep for future medical interviews should I have any)! But I think the interview went okish- wasn't amazing, wasn't awful. I’ve not heard back from them yet and as the days pass (though only 1 day has gone so far) I feel more and more doubtful about whether I've got the job, but at least I have the admin job that lasts until January hey (though I would really love to get the permanent job so I could be doing it together with the healthcare assistant job). I thought maybe I’d hear from them today but I’m still waiting...
So yeah anyway as you can see I've been pretty busy and I knew this post would be long lol! I’m gonna try and stay more up to date this blog because this has taken me forever to type out hah!
But yeah I have work tomorrow from 7am-1pm so I better be off to bed as I have to set my alarm for 5.30am (not a nice feeling) :(
Sweet dreams :-)
