Almost there

I feel that I should post as I have neglected my blog for so long!

My placement is going really well, I have only 4 and a half weeks left but have discovered I need to make up another 6 shifts that I owe. I have very nearly finished my Portfolio essay and now it feels the end is in sight! By the end of April I should have all my work submitted and my hours done.

I'm trying to think if we've had any interesting cases recently. There was a little boy who had swallowed a 5pence coin yesterday, his younger brother had put it in the back of his mouth and whilst his mum tried to remove it he swallowed it! We used a metal detector to locate it, but as this method is currently being audited we had to confirm with x-ray. It was in his stomach and not causing any problems so nature is left to take its course. Fortunatly it was only a 5pence piece and not a 50 pence!

We had an unpleasant child yesterday, about 4 years old, who decided to hit me in the face and knock my (new) glasses onto the floor and then kicked me. He wasn't frightened, in pain or struggling to get away, just a naughty little boy who refused to apologise and smiled everytime he was told off. Mum assured us he didn't get away with it at home (yeah right) as he continued trying to hit and kick me as I fitted his collar and cuff (a foamy sling for soft tissue injuries).

The NMC is visiting our clinical area next week to audit the student placement experience/education and I've been asked to work that day, they're also auditing a clinical area I've worked in previously. It will be easy to provide a good report for my current area, they're brilliant, but not so easy for the other. It was a children's hospice that had recently lost its funding, there were a lot of redundancies being made and the service was very under used because of financial problems, it meant there was often nothing to do on the placement as there were few or no patients. I did learn some things, but most of my time was spent doing nothing at all, I think with funding it had the potential to be a very good clinical area.