magical fantastical yet lacking

spending 60% of your time at work can sometimes have a huge impact on your family life. essentially you are spending more time at work than seeing your loved ones - lets face it when you get home, you barely have time left in the day and all you want to do is head to bed.
consequently, working as a healthcare assistant can sometime be a drag. when everyone is enjoying their weekend, you're the one that has to be off to work either really early in the morning or abruptly destroying your lunchtime at home to get to work on time. either way, your weekend is ruined!!
when you finally have the time off, everyone else would be at work, you get bored, and quite simply, quality time with family just simply isn't possible.
this makes me wonder, how happy am i at work? people at work would be classed as your second family because you are predominantly spending more time there. if the relationships at work are not up to scratch, make the effort to make your time worthwhile. otherwise, it just shows that you are unhappy where you are, take a chance and change. if a job is not satisfactory then begin applying elsewhere. you don't have to stay and endure the hardships and politics at work. after all, its not healthy to be in a bad relationship - any shrink would tell you this!

part of your world

I thought that by becoming a healthcare assistant i would get this amazing insight into how the ward functioned. reality is different. today consisted of a considerable amount of washes in the morning, followed by wiping away diarrhea while trying to mobilise a patient. if it was up to me, i would have taken the patient there using a commode, but the new nurse decided against it. nevertheless, damage control was our objective. this was then followed by a major and elaborate bed movements. i was so tired by the end of my shift. healthcare assistance is not a glorified role, you are on the front line and it requires great resilience to get through shift after shift. of course, this wouldn't be a problem for someone who just wants to hurt their back at work, but for the majority of us, it means always assessing the best course of action to take. its important to work smart, because if you don't you could be wiping away diarrhea all day. 

compelled to quit

It feels futile the efforts and dedication given to the things that matter the most when it comes to the outcome and it seems so bleak and significantly disappointing. you feel as though your priorities change. you no longer wish to do the job you were contractually obliged to do, but instead look inside to realise that your efforts all this time were disregarded, wasted. you realise that in order to gain something you must lose another. today i was faced with this decision, and the first thought cropped into my head was to quit this dead end job. quit the misery and the suffering. quit the anxiety and the depression. quit the longing to kill yoursellf everytime you hear that patient calling 'nurse' every few minutes. thinking more thoroughly i identified that indeed, i am not happy where i am in life. i am working at a role that is below my potential and indeed it may be a stepping stone, it feels as though i am not learning anything. i feel that the experience gained does not outweigh my desire to quit this job. and so, i am now faced with a harsh and real decision: shall i quit this job and concentrate on other things?
i feel tourmented between yes and no. i feel like a caged bird in this job, yet if i am to set myself free i fear for things to go south. i have already witnessed how not having a job affected someone dear to me, two people in fact. though i know that something like that will never happen to me. i am simply stronger and i have my initiative. i am however stuck. i cant choose whether to quit, just 2 months into the role, or stay and see if things do get better... i doubt they would get better. in fact, i know they won't get better. with that said i feel that the answer should be obvious. i should simply take a leap of faith, and quit.

student nurses

so i had a student nurse helping me out today and giggles just couldn't stop. maybe it was the ridiculous amount of washes we accomplished or how patients just lit up today, even the sleepy ones. it was really nice to see the ward in an upbeat atmosphere for a change :)

3-6 hours a day of revision is blasphemy! :O

so doc was saying that you need at least 3-6 hours a day of revision (and 6 hours of revision definitely on your day off) and i freaked. how on earth are we expected to get this amount of revision a day sorted? today i'm clearing out my megaz0r computer, substituting it with an ultrabook. that guys, is because this laptop has no graphics card, which means no games/movies to distract me. i've also created a revision timetable which this time round i intend to stick to because i can't ever get 3 - 6 hours of revision done in a day, so the only way to do it is to keep things fresh in my mind through accumulative forms be it listening to myself reading a book, or actually reading/practicing parts relevant for gamsat. meh.. it all sounds glamorous now just wait till march x.x ehh will keep a log of my knowledge base here over the course of the year. 

How can we be right?

so yesterday i was faced with a prominent issue at work, our ward was invaded with post operation patients from the surgical ward. problem is, we've never had training on how to deal with these type of patients (us HCAs). everyone was so different! 2 patients came from EMT (ears, mouth & throat ward), 1 from  plastics, 1 from cardio and the remainder were abdo-pains/ gastroenterology. we had to change the boards 3 times in my shift because of ortho patients no longer were able to stay on the wards because of this influx. so predominantly i was making beds.
to tackle the problem with these new patients i had to keep asking for help because unlike ortho patients, these guys obviously were more in pain, required more nursing needs rather than what is required in the HCA job description.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Quoted by Albert Einstein

Truth be said, I actually agree with this. To think that for one day in our lives we could go without the use of technology is unfathomable! Struggle we would, as we won't be able to check our emails, toast our toast, never mind getting to work in under 10 minutes! Technology has intertwined with our lives that we no longer really think about how much we are better off. Take the latter example above, in poorly developing countries, once a child reaches adolescence, they are expected to take responsibility for their family, and work. Whether be it fetching water from a 10 mile walk across a dangerous land, or going into sulphur toxic factories.. they will not get the same privileges we do with our technologically advanced houses with warm and clean waters. Or the luxuries of travelling by car - yet in a way we all feel somewhat imprisoned. It seems that we're not happy with what we have. We are always seeking ways to improve our lifestyles. Perhaps the side effects of having technology has blinded us from what's really important.

I was speaking to an elderly last week about how technology has become so prominent and essential in our life, and she opened her wardrobe for me. She showed me a dress which is still in its immaculate condition. She had this dress for over 30 years. She then showed me her comb, she had that for as long as she could remember! It really made me think, we rely so much on technology and we're always looking to buy more. Somewhere along the road, we all became completely reliant on technology, so much so that we feel anxiety and depression if we cannot check our emails. The feeling of missing out on vital requisites drive us mad!
I know that I previously worshipped my megaz0r pc, since I built it completely by hand, its like an extension of my limbs to improve my art, to improve my connectivity to the digital world. Surely enough, it played an essential part in my studies and took a significant chunk from my free time, just being on the internet. I feel somewhat cheated, I signed myself up to an endless abyss where time was the fuel, and no significant changes were taking place. Its only when you look at the bigger picture that you realise that with all the technology around, you should be careful to pick only what you know you will need, not what you want - just because its new and amazing. Everything has its time and I'm glad that I have realised the significance of technologies, and became more sensitive to the destruction it also brings into our lifestyles. We are all slaves to technologies we have created, and every so often we should detach ourselves from these intoxicating and addictive mediums.

new job (and minion blog) and revision

mini notice: new blog where i discuss everything healthcare assistant related, here: http://***.blogspot.co.uk/ deleted, sorry for any inconvenience

so gamsat was a chore, and well i'm not expecting a fabulous score as i was very much drowning with work. during my absence (from here) i've been playing world of warcraft (post-exam). its my way to chill after exams, take a pc game and grind my characters and complete the game 100%.
of course though now that november is here, world of warcraft stops, and attention goes back to revision. i didnt actually think i would enjoy this game much honestly.. but its very less social than flyff which really makes it terrible! enough brain matter destruction so bring on the wonderful joys of revision :D

bed-bound patients & muscle atrophy

it really hurts seeing people bed bound. one popped hip or fracture due to a hospital fall and there you go, a week in bed at least for recovery!
on top of it all, you'll be admitted into a place with so many other terminally ill patients you become to think in a similar way to them. its only when someone educated comes along and gives you a reality slap.
you lose 2% muscle mass for every single day you stay bed-bound without activity. it makes sense that you'll start to get weaker and weaker. even the young would feel these effects, if not a little less than the old.
research suggests that muscle loss or 'atrophy' begins within 4 hours of bed rest!
if you're a healthcare professional please please educate your patients! get them to carry out bed exercises, get them to roll around the bed independently, get your patients to do repeated movements and sit them up really well in their beds/chairs. put some music on, start dancing, change the atmosphere in your ward. these people are here not to die, their recovery needs to be enhanced with motivation. emotional labour only goes so much, get to know your patients and treat them as individuals.
its infuriating being a healthcare assistant, especially dealing with incompetence on the wards.

We are the change

Today we had a complex patient with dementia and an unstable blood sugar level. The first thought cropped into my head was 'mismanagement'. Despite the efforts to restore the blood sugar levels to normal, obviously the nurse had no idea of how to handle a patient like this. I felt challenged today that despite my best efforts to bring the patient into perspective, nothing was registering. Curious case, and for the first time, in all my time here, I feel motivated to be a healthcare assistant. Maybe there is hope after all..