Everyone is nervous on their first day...

As a student nurse your first placement, especially if you've never had any clinical experience before (like me!) will be nerve-wracking! Luckily most nurses on the wards will remember what it was like to have once been a student. I'm now on my second placement and have decided to start this blog as an aid for other people who are either in my position or soon will be.
We just received our first semester results and I am so relieved to say I passed everything, I was 100% convinced that I had failed everything. Honestly, if I can do it, anybody can. Not putting myself down but in that first semester I wasn't the most hard-working or dedicated student, but I managed to realise that I had to give it my all and it paid off.

I'm now on the 3rd week of my second placement and I'm sort of starting to feel like I belong on the ward. However, I will never get used to having my nails cut like this :

As you can see since I'm on week 3 I already have some dry parts from washing my hands so frequently. I'm definitely not going to complain about doing that before it has to be done for the safety of the patients. It would be dangerous and selfish to not wash your hands as much because they're not as baby-soft as usual. Another thing that was hard for me to get used to was getting up at 6am. This is a time that in my life time, before I started placements I very rarely saw. (Unless I'd had a verrrry good night the night before!) So if you're worried about getting up and being so tired that you can't work. Don't be. Anybody can adjust to getting up at an earlier time, I even managed a night shift on my first placement although it did throw me off my pattern for a few days. I'm going to sign off now as I have a fair bit of work to do before I go to bed at 21:30! (See? Being sensible since I have to get up at 6am tomorrow)