Life in the wards

Life in the wards here is totally different to my life in the ward I was working in back home. After working in a busy acute surgical ward this is a breeze! On a typical shift here we start by praying for our patients and the for the shift ahead of us, after that we recieve hand over of our patients and start our tasks for the day. Quite often this includes health education and teaching our patients about what to expect before and after surgery, monitoring them after surgery, giving out medications, playing games with them and generally spending time chatting with them. Although this can be very hard due to the language barrier! So generally we have to use our translators to be able to actually communicate with them which I found hugely frustrating at first but now find it strange if I actually have a patient that can speak english!!

I very rarely give anything IV (intravenous) other than fluids, I havent done many complex dressings or had many 'really sick' patients. I take a lot of vital signs and hand out an awful lot of pain medications, sometimes I dont even feel like I am a 'real nurse' here but I must admit I still love it and I know its where I am meant to be for now.