Its happened guys. I’m currently on my final placement as I type (metaphorically not physically), how scary is that!! I have to admit, when I first started this course and saw students on their Final Placements I had reservations I would make it to this point…would I learn enough to get there?? would I be confident enough to look after more than one patient?? Would I pass my OSCEs and learn the clinical skills?? Would I survive night shifts?? It was enough to make me dizzy.

THANKFULLY, here I am! I’m pretty proud of myself- throughout the last three years each placement I have been on has helped me to grow and build on not only my theoretical knowledge, but also my practical skills. Working in close contact with other students, qualified nurses, and patients has allowed me to continually learn and develop as a person.

When it comes to placements, its important to remember that even though some are short (in second year we had quite a few 4 week placements) you have to get stuck in and make the most of opportunities that are offered.

This can be really hard as it can take time for you to settle in to the ward, or school, community team etc and with the people you are working with, but that becomes easier as the course goes on.  Whilst you might not be overjoyed at all your placements, you have to make the best of them and find things you can do to solidify your learning….in the community you give that sub-cut injection! Go out with the specialist nurses! Go to post natal support groups! Things like going on home oxygen assesment visits, they might seem trivial but when you are back on the ward it will click: ‘my patient is being sent home on oxygen, I better refer to the community nursing team before discharge to make sure its safe’, everything you do can be used as a learning opportunity and improve the care you give to each and every patient.

In special schools, speak to the Makaton Specialist! work with the school nurse, do presentations on personal hygiene! Understand the different disbilities that children can suffer and see how children and adolescents overcome them, allowing them to live their best lives. Communication skills are hugely important, and I’ve found that I use techniques picked up at my special school placement everyday on the ward.

Most placements on the ward have sessions being run by education faciltators, for example safeguarding sessions, blood glucose monitoring, aseptic technique, medicine managment…if you get the opportunity to attend make sure you do! It stands you in good stead for you final placement as you have a better grasp on certain skills and willl be able to perform them more confidently.

Every placement is organised for you to learn new skills, its so important to make sure that you go in with an open mind, try and forget pre-conceived views, and don’t always take your collegues opinion as gospel! Even if they have been to that area before you, you may have a completely different experience! But if you go in with a closed mind, then I can guarantee you will not have as much fun, or learn as much as you could!

So, moral of the stroy is…. make the most of all the learning opportunities, because when you get to your final placement its your time to shine and show that you have taken charge of your personal development and can be an asset to the team you are working with!

Hi Everyone,

Apologies for the delay in posting, its been a busy christmas and start to 2018!

Lets recap over the Christmas holidays….

• I started to decide on research for my disseratation
• preperation for final placement
• general nerves/freak out about the fact that I graduate and qualify in 2018…

DISSERTATION!!!!!!! Lets make that the topic of this post:

The mere word caused shivers of terror down my spine at the start of third year, but it is honestly not as bad as I thought it would be (so far anyway). Firstly we get advice on deciding topics, so looking in to areas that you have a particular interest in- for me, I am interested in emergency/critical care so wanted to do something based around that area.

Now I’m not going to lie and say I found it easy to come up with a question, because truth be told I went through about 5 different versions before I settled on my final one (and even then I might end up altering it slightly for the final draft but hey-ho such is life). Anyway, we decided our questions, and based on the titles were allocated our Dissertation Advisors…now, these people are fab!! Its so important to introduce yourself to your advisor so that you can get to know them and feel comfortable with them…after all you have to have a fair few meetings to make sure your writing is on track. I’ve met up with my advisor multiple times, and she has helped me massively, even though I havent written much of it yet. I feel more confident in what needs to be done to meet the assesment criteria. Thankfully in my last meeting, I went in ready to pull out my hair and not really knowing what I needed to do, but my advisor broke the sections down and helped me work through it in chunks…..I think thats one of the main things to remember, that even though its a large piece of work, it can be broken down in to sections and then subsections and even more subsections if you want! Make sure you work with your advisor to help you break it down so that you can manage it without stressing yourself out…

When it comes to finding research for your diss, its a long process (I can’t lie…can you sense a theme?) but using the Health Sciences Library workshops that are run is super helpful, there is one run specifically for “searching for research for your health science literature review”. I attended this, and honestly, found out I’ve been using the search platforms wrong for the past 2 years, so that was helpful and eye opening! No wonder it took me so long to find research for my coursework! I would definiley say reflecting on my first two years of the course, to make sure you really use the librians avaliable for your course, they are so knowledgable and really know their stuff! They can help you with structuring searches, finding books in the library and referencing styles suitable for your course marking criteria….definitley worth a visit if you ask me. Now you won’t need to find hundreds of articles, fear not, normally around 6-10, you then have to read through these and evaluate them (you will get the hang of how to do that during the course, and its dicussed in depth during the dissertation module)

You can start your disseration prep whenever you like, the sooner the better, and slowly work at it, chipping away every now and again in small chunks, and gradually the whole thing wont seem as scary (I should take my own advice I think), the main thing to remember is that your advisors and lecturers don’t want you to fail! So if you ask for help they will give it to you!