As you all know and if you don’t…. I’m a very proud Children’s nurse, my very good friend Anna is also. We both love nursing and we both love brunch, we often meet over brunch to discuss our current work (and non work) related issues.
So to celebrate the NHS’s 70th birthday we thought we would do just that. So we met today and sat down over a delicious brunch to discuss some hot topics about the NHS. Anna (just click on her name for the link) has a flipping brilliant blog post up on her blog about all the delicious food that we devoured while discussing all things NHS.
On the 5th July 2018 the NHS celebrates its 70th year and we wanted to celebrate it by sharing some of our various thoughts and experiences. Some fantastic memories and some bitter sweet ones but all important to us both, Anna has been working in the NHS for 2 years and 9 months and I’ve been working in the NHS for 4 years. We’ve both always worked in the children’s sector , we trained as children’s nurses and have never swayed from that.
There have been so many bitter sweet moments for us both throughout the years but what we do enjoy even on the hard days when you don’t even have time for a wee let alone a lunch break is the thought that our work makes a difference and together with the multidisciplinary team we can make a difference to the child and the family.
There are hard times in the NHS and without looking at things from rose tinted glasses you are can sometimes feel helpless and feel like you’ve let a family down. When the diagnosis isn’t as you hoped and all the help and support that you give won’t change it is sometimes hard to swallow. Anna also mentioned something that has been a very big topic of discussion in the press recently that working in a DGH (district general hospital) can be tough when you are faced with treating patients- specifically adolescents- with mental health issues. There is a lack of funding here and it has to be dealt with ASAP. With all the good will in the world we can’t help these young people with the facilities we have- they need specialist help.
Being a good communicator is something that is really important in children’s nursing as small children can’t communicate with you and tell you whats wrong with them so using your skills to communicate with the families is really important. Being able to empathise with the bigger picture when a child is unwell is also a big part of the job, looking past the hospital stay and realising that the family has a life, a whole different world outside of this hospital stay.
The final topic we touched on was where we would like to see the NHS in 10 years time. Anna jokingly said still running but she’s right! Both of us highly value the NHS and we would love to see it still going strong in 10 years time. I would love for the hard working people of the NHS to still have the same amount of passion for their jobs and for the public to keep on showing them the respect they deserve.
Love the NHS people! It’s important! It saves lives! Happy Brunching
Great post Lyds, forever grateful for the NHS. Always been brilliant with me.
Very very grateful for all the hard work you, Anna, and so many other hard working nurses do!! Thank you!