Back to Work

So here it is..... Guy's Hospital. It is under the same trust as St. Thomas'. It is right by London Bridge in town. It was quite a day....

This morning I got up at 5:30, left the house at six, walked to the underground, took the underground and changed trains twice and walked in the door at 7. Full hour commute which is rediculous to me but very common for many Londoners. Yikes!

I went to the floor at 7:30 as assigned and found the "Ward Sister" (sounds churcie but she is basically the manager).

I had just showed up in my street clothes as directed so she sent me downstairs to reception to get some scrubs. I couldn't find that anywhere so I when to the front desk and they sent me to the basement...

I finally found the Linen room and there was no one there so I found some shelfs with scrubs on them so I grabbed a few and headed back up to the ward.

From what I found out during the day, this unit was recently moved into a nice new location and somehow in the process they have tons of new staff. So today there was the ward sister, a charge nurse and Penny who has been there four years. The two other nurses there were both new grads of about two weeks working on their own. I was assigned to work with Penny who already had a new grad and a student working with her. As a result I ended up working for most of the day with the student nurse....what! It really is baptism by fire around here. We had 9 patients! Granted most of them were pretty capable of taking care of themselves but still it was just complete chaos. I felt completly useless and spent most of the day following people around. So that piece wasn't exactly encouraging. The redeeming factor was that the people I worked with were really great. A lot of them were my age and really friendly and helpful, so once I figure out what is going on I think it will be fine.

Shift ended at 8:30, left by 8:45 home by 10pm. So glad I don't have to work tomorrow!