MGS RADAR

I’m in charge for a ward of four rooms with five people on a trauma surgical ward and considering we’re still student nurses it’s a challenge for all of us.

We split the four rooms in half so for each shift half of the staff is responsible for EVERYTHING what the nurses normally do which means I have three to six patients.

Positive:

- My team is great, just great they are putting so much effort in this thing and they work like maniacs to get the best out of our patients.

- Everybody is an expert in a certain aspect of nursing, Mine is pain medicine and medications, other is mobilization of patients and besides that everybody is an expert of the basics

- The team itself is great because WE TALK. We talk about everything and everybody knows about everything. The key of pushing teammates is to give them personal responsibility for their work and the consequences of their actions.

- Our teaching nurse is very helpful, she wants to see the absolute maximum !
-  The doctors are new on this ward and besides that they care about true teamwork which means interchanging work. We think about things they have to think and they think about our things. We have a very experienced surgeon and a very new and dedicated intern surgeon. Makes fun.

Negative:

- The material we are working with is shit. I have to work with broken toilet seats, I have three bedsheets and three bedcovers (on a GOOD day) to take care about post-operative (Which means dirty and bleeding) patients. I have no towels or washcloths. The blood-pressure - cuff is either lost or also not working and I need thirty minutes of searching through the whole hospital to get a decent cuff so we have at least the BASIC equipment to take care about patients. This is not funny at all!

- The division managing nurse bothers me as a charge nurse with permanent shitload of things. She has no fucking clue about my patients and tells me to take a patient out of the bed or give him something to eat which I didn’t because the patient didn’t WANT TO EAT OR GET OUT OF BED. During the talking with her, she signalizes me exactly what she thinks of us: I have no clue, I have no experience, I’m just a fucking student nurse to fuck up with shitwork she won’t do.. I respect 20 years of nursing experience but I think respect should be on both sides.

All in all, we handle our patients very well and they are improving…great job!

Stephan

["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]