Not pretty, so necessary, easy when you know how.

Unsurprisingly, on my course we have mandatory basic life support training. Fair enough. I mean, if someone needed CPR in a hospital and no nurses could do it we would have a bit of a problem, wouldn’t we. It doesn’t stop me groaning every time I see it on the timetable, or trying to work out if ‘a tiger broke in to my house and ate my timetable’ would pass as a valid excuse to stay in bed and miss it.

 

That is, until Monday.

 

So let’s give you a bit of background here, travelling back from Devon to Birmingham is never a short journey. I don’t even like trains. Not one little bit. Truth be told, little bit terrified of them. Judge me all you want. But knowing that the roads would be chaos, my housemate would be travelling with me and the only seat on the MegaBus would be next to the guy who hasn’t washed in 3 weeks persuaded me to bite the bullet and buy a train ticket. Exmouth to Exeter, Exeter to Birmingham. The journey started with me missing my first train, in true Sarah style I legged it across the road, bags flying all over the place to find a smug woman telling me that despite the train still being in the station, I couldn’t get on it. Fine. 

 

It was a long journey, one of those ones where you just wish you could apparate, damn you JK Rowling for introducing me to something that I can’t do in the muggle world. But eventually we arrive at new street station. Excited to get outside and have a cigarette I practically gallop through the station, not taking in to consideration the old woman who had a near miss when she stood in my path. About to light up and I see two guys staring in to a lift. I’m not even going to hide it to you guys, I am nosey, like ridiculously nosey, so I wandered over and explained that I have my first aid qualifications and I’m a student nurse, is there anything I could do to help? I was not ready for the events that were about to unfold. 

 

Man, in lift, unresponsive.

 

Danger. Response. Shout for help. Airway. Breathing. Circulation.

 

Nothing.

 

Not even one little pulse. Or a tiny breath. No pink cheeks but a grey tinge. Nothing like casualty or holby city or greys anatomy.

 

3 rounds of compressions. Defibrillator thrown at me. Adrenaline pumping. 3 ambulances. 5 paramedics. Police. Station staff. Pedestrians wanting a good look.

 

Its funny, you can go through it a million times, I mean, I help train people to know how to do this, I’m training to be a nurse, but there is always that little bit of you that feels you might not be able to do it if you were faced with that situation. 

 

Trust me on this one, you can.

 

Something in you brings back everything you know, everything you were taught in your emergency first aid course or at brownies. Every bit of advice you have been given that you stuck in the back of your head because what you are really thinking is when will I ever even need this?

 

Do me a favour; think back to when you last watched casualty, or greys anatomy, or holby city. Can you remember? Good. Now rack your brains to think about a patient who needed CPR, being bought in on a trolley with doctors, nurses and paramedics yelling medical jargon all around them. The patient (who more often than not is looking incredibly healthy) is found to have no pulse, CPR is commenced.

 

Now have a really good think for me, imagine what that medical professional on your TV looks like.

 

Not even breaking a sweat?

 

Pushing down less than a cm on the patient’s chest?

 

In a calm, quiet environment with nobody peering through the windows?

 

Exciting? Yes. Beautifully presented? Yes. Accurate? No.

 

If you really think about it, CPR is not pretty. It is not glamorous. It does not only last for 2 minutes then the patient sits up and thanks everybody for their help and could they please get a cup of tea. 

 

It is brutal.

 

It is ribs cracking underneath your hands.

 

It is confined spaces with awkward angles, because believe it or not the patient doesn’t often lie flat on their back with plenty of space and no danger around

 

It is sweaty

 

It is fast paced

 

And nothing can prepare you for the feeling that you could be breaking someone’s ribs. Nobody can tell you about the rush of emotions you will feel afterwards, pride, happiness, guilt, fear. You want to cry and laugh at the same time. 

 

But listen to this, you can save somebody’s life, and when you are actually in the situation, there is so much adrenaline pumping round your body that you don’t even think about it, you just do it. Everything around you slows down and you focus. You focus on getting that heart pumping. Everything inside of you wants that family to get a phone call saying ‘although he needed CPR, it was given at the scene and he is now stable’. You want them to live.

 

And it doesn’t bear thinking about what you would do if it was your family member or friend. But take this moment to think about it, would you want people to know what to do if it was your loved one who collapsed? Knowing basic first aid is a vital skill that I personally believe that every single person should know.

 

Some statistics show that in the UK, fewer than one in five people who suffer from a survivable cardiac arrest receive the life saving aid that they need from people nearby. Less than one in five. Isn’t that appalling? 

 

If you are reading this and you don’t have first aid training, why not? You could save someone’s life. I don’t know what happened after the ambulance took that guy away the other day; I have no idea whether he lived or died. But you know what, I know first aid, I have been taught how to do CPR, and thanks to that I was able to give him a fighting chance. I don’t think I will ever find out the outcome, but the opportunity was there to give someone back their granddad, dad, son, friend. 

 

And no, it’s not pretty. It’s not something you ever want to do.

 

So do me a favour, contact your local first aid provider, Action for Life (07511623924) or myself, and learn, in the words of the fray, how to save a life.

 

Because it's easy when you know how.

Thank you.

 

Dear future nurses...

Dear future nurses,

As I sit and write this, I am aware that there are students up and down the country about to start a degree in nursing. 

A year ago, I was you.

And I was terrified. 

It’s not that I didn’t want to go in to nursing, it’s really not. It’s just, in the hours that I spent trawling google to try and find some advice on what to expect, I found very little. And that really scared me. So this is a letter to you, no matter where you are going to study, here is some (probably a little too honest) advice from one student nurse to the next.

1.  No matter how much passion you have for your course, there will be days/weeks/months where you just want to throw in the towel, admit defeat and walk away. But that is okay. Nursing is difficult, I’m not even going to try and hide it. You will have challenging patients, heck, you will have challenging mentors. When asking for advice about what to put in this letter from some close friends at uni, one came back to me and said ‘be prepared for unhelpful mentors who aren’t interested in you at all’. Thankfully, I have been lucky with mentors, but I know of a few people who have wanted to quit the course because of the mentor that they have been assigned to. It all contributes to those evenings where you collapse on to your bed after a 13 hour shift, cry a bit, phone your parents and say ‘I want to quit’. If you listen to one thing, listen to this…don’t. When you get that feeling, look in the mirror and say ‘I am a good nurse. I can do this’. Repeat until you feel better about yourself. You got this shit! 

2. Self-care is the most important thing in this course! Look after yourself. During placement time, you will drag yourself out of bed at some unearthly hour in the morning, stand at a freezing cold bus stop wondering how the hell the first bus of the day is late, despite there being absolutely no freaking traffic anywhere. Get on the bus, grunt at the bus driver, run from the bus stop to handover. Make the most of handover; think you are sitting down again for the rest of the day? Think again. When you are on the ward, you are more concerned about your patients than you are yourself, in my first placement I frequently left at 8pm after starting at 7am and not had a chance to pee. Always have one day a week where you don’t do anything, have a ‘you’ day. That may mean not setting an alarm, waking up at 2pm and only getting out of bed and leaving your Netflix binge to answer the door to the pizza delivery guy. That’s okay. It really is; you will need it!

3. Some people will say some really stupid things to you. And it’s fine to turn around and walk away. Far, far away. My personal favourites?...

‘Nurses are only in it for the money’ – Er, are you being serious right now mate? 

‘Are you coming out this weekend?’ – as much as I would love to come out, I will be buried in books trying to remember different types of hallucinations, why the hell we need a heart and despite your lecturer telling you otherwise, you are convinced that you know people functioning without a brain. Or maybe even just staring in to space wondering why on earth you’re not asleep. Or drunk. Or both. 

‘You’re young, you shouldn’t need caffeine’ – Speechless. If you didn’t believe that caffeine should be right at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you will when you do your first 13 hour shift, and it only gets stronger and stronger, but you notice the effects less and less. Don’t believe me? Tell me that again in a year. 

‘You’re so lucky, you only have to work 4 days a week! LONG WEEKEND FOR YOU!’ – No. Just no. 

4. You may (will) forget that your non-nursing friends don’t do the same as you. Sometimes one of your multiple stories about bodily fluids plastering the walls just doesn’t go down too well at a family dinner party. Who knew. On the bright side, you can eat your dinner whilst still engrossed in 24 hours in A&E/One born every minute/Casualty. You will have a strong stomach by the end of this. 

5. Don’t be afraid to ask questions whilst on placement, you won’t learn by staying quiet. And whilst we are on this, don’t keep all your questions for your mentor. Learn from the team around you, they are a wealth of knowledge, use them! I have worked within some fantastic teams, but the people I learnt most from? The patients. They will teach you more than a lecturer ever will be able to. Take some time to talk to your patients, they are people, not objects that you fix then send home. I promise you, you won’t regret it. 

6. Theory doesn’t always fit the practice, don’t go in to nursing expecting it to be straightforward, and don’t expect there to be a reasonable answer for everything. I’m really sorry; it just doesn’t work like that, however much you want it to. Two patients with the same diagnosis? You can almost guarantee that they will present differently. It’s confusing, believe me, I know. But I’m afraid you will have to get used to it! 

7. Don’t be afraid to cry. Don’t be ashamed that you are drained after your first week. Seek advice. Don’t let ANYONE make you feel small and inadequate. No explanation needed.

You are going to make a fantastic nurse, I promise! Please don’t let this scare you, you are going to do incredible things and meet incredible people! Despite the grumbles, it is so worth it, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life, we love what we do, otherwise we wouldn’t do it! 

So go to university – and go make a difference, this is what you were born to do. We need you.

All my love and best of luck for the future.

A second year student nurse (Mental health branch)

P.S…buy some comfy shoes, you won’t regret it.

Dear Mr Cameron...

Dear Mr Cameron,

So I'm guessing today was a big day for you, I mean, you won. After months of campaigning and telling the general public that you are going to do this and that to improve their lives, it all boiled down to today, and that great for you, and the the rich people of the UK, but what about the rest of us? And what about the NHS? The same NHS that cared for your son and your family, you know, the NHS that, quite frankly, you don't seem to give a shit about.

In the past 5 years, own healthcare system has fallen to its knees, it has been torn apart, trodden on, sold off and ripped to shreds by you and your mates. But you know that don't you, Mr Cameron? You know that because you have allowed it to happen, encouraged it even. But let's delve deeper, let's take a look at the care that is being provided to patients with mental health issues. Because let's be honest here David, someone needs to. And that begs the question, could our nationwide mental health crisis actually get any worse right now? I'm guessing we will find that out in the next 5 years, but it isn't looking good. 

1 in 4, Mr Cameron. 1 in 4 people of your country will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lifetime. The most logical thing to do? Invest in the services that help individuals with mental health issues recover, to allow our patients to go back to being mums, dads, sisters, brothers, police officers, firefighters, teachers...need I go on? But what seems to be happening? Cuts, cuts and more cuts. Mental health doesn't discriminate, Dave, it affects anyone. You, your wife, your two children, scary to think that if one of your family members had a mental health issue and needed help, your cuts could mean they are turned away and told to wait 6 weeks because there just aren't enough beds. It happens far too frequently already, what is it going to be like after another 5 years of conservative power?

It's scary. And I know those two words echo the thoughts of thousands of people who work in the area all over the uk. It is terrifying. Terrifying to know that after 20 years of service to healthcare, Jo might not have a job next week. Terrifying to know that in a mental health emergency, James could be turned away due to lack of funding. Terrifying to think that Beth took her own life after being put on that waiting list because she simply could not cope anymore. Too many people are falling through the cracks of a broken care system. These are our families, friends, neighbours, community, they are the ones who put their trust in to you to run their country, don't they deserve a little more respect?

As student nurses, we are a class of 30 and full of enthusiasm, we want to change the system, we want to better the lives of our patients. Do you know how difficult it is to be enthusiastic when we don't even know if we will be able to get a job at the end of our course? And if we can get a job, we are going in to a failing system, Mr Cameron. Do you understand how draining that is? Of course you don't. 

So do this for us, do this for your country, take a look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what we can do to make this work. 

Yours sincerely 

NHS staff, 1 in 4, your country.