The Learning Process

My first nursing placement now has two weeks left to run. I’ve just about got used to the early starts, the long days, and having to wear clothes that need ironing. Nick’s job is also due to finish in a few weeks, so the future feels uncertain. We’re trying to stay positive, but if positivity isn’t coming naturally, it’s a fragile concept. Home late last night, having not eaten for twelve hours, we went out for a takeaway. Both of us wanted to vent, neither of us felt like listening, so out voices ebbed away into a mutually dissatisfied silence. Fried food fixed it of course. What doesn’t a kebab improve. Heart disease? Oh.


It was inevitable that I would make a gigantic cock-up on this placement. Last week, it happened. Although I regret it, and curse my bad behaviour, I’m sort of relieved. Whilst I have no belief in fate or any spooky goings on, and certainly didn’t intend to do anything wrong, I had felt it coming. What now? Mistakes, especially as a student are viewed as learning experiences ,and everybody has been very kind to me in this respect. I’m less generous with myself though, because, I should have known better, and in particular, known to trust my instincts. Ah well, what’s done is done.

I’m glad I picked mental health nursing, although the shadows of my former career are appearing all the time. In a break between meetings, I was asked about my background. When I said Learning Disabilities there was a pause and then, from the dashing young consultant and his older junior ‘LD? Oohh’. Another silence followed. I had no idea what it meant. They asked a few more questions, and assumed I had been a support worker, which I encouraged. The NHS is all about status, and I find it easier to play down my background. It saves my explaining myself and people seem to feel easier. I sense that some of the people who have been told have gone on to have felt judged. While there have been some things I haven’t liked, I respect everyone I’ve been working with, so that hasn’t been my intention. I had an odd moment outside of the hospital. Someone with a person with learning disabilities stopped me. I did not recognise him, but he was excited to see me. ‘Oh, you’re working in mental health now?’ His eyes on the badge and then to the person I was accompanying. Luckily, the car pulled up an we had to go.

So much is the same that I’m caught out by the differences. Patients tell me their stories, and I listen. These are versions of the horror stories I enjoyed as a teenager, but they are real, lived out by the person before me once in the flesh and then often in their mind, the damage extending through years and generations. Astonished, not knowing how to help, I am not speaking because I don’t know what to say. They go on, sometimes angry, often weeping and then apologise to me. Inept, I tell them that they are brave and strong, that things will get better. Once their crisis has passed, I make a them hot drink, or fold laundry, I offer clean sheets, small comforts. They thank me. I feel bad, because that’s the gratifying bit. When nursing is described as ‘rewarding’, that’s what is meant. Because I find it a terrible thing to leave a person with tears still drying alone, I deposit them in the lounge, hoping that they may be cheered up by an antiques programme and the company of others. There is always an antiques programme.

Everything has to be reported and recorded so I retreat to the office where the phone is always ringing and there’s a lot of paper. I write down the gist of the conversation, but it’s hard to know what’s important from the nursing perspective and much of it doesn’t translate to the page. I pretend composure, pass it on to the nurses. They spot the things that affect the treatment plans and the risk assessments, embodying the saying about changing what can be changed, accepting what can’t be and having the wisdom to know the difference. I have much to learn.