At this time in 2006 I think I was celebrating the conclusion of an IT project and was getting a few rounds in on the Tattersall Castle. Fast forward a decade and I’m on my off-day from a placement in a mental health hospital in London. Somehow in that decade I went from being interested in making changes on the large impersonal scale to trying to make a difference to individuals. How did I get here?
I think in life we take a lot for granted and view the world as fairly static – our parents will always be there; there’s a job to go; relationships are everlasting, and the list goes on … Then a parent dies or enjoyment in the job ebbs away or relationships go haywire, and erosion in our core beliefs and actions begins to take place. Thus you wake up one morning and realise that you are at a crossroads and don’t have to follow the same path and can actually do something new! This was where I stood in 2013 when I enrolled on an Access to nursing course at Morley College. For me nursing was a way in which I could make a contribution to my community, making it better by helping one person at a time.
Back to 2016, I’m in my final year of University working on a hospital ward which focuses on providing care for the elderly who suffer mental health issues. This builds on previous placements on acute wards including RAID (A&E Liaison) and forensics and the community (my first ever placement). As someone with an elderly parent, I have found my current placement the hardest to date as it makes me reflect on the ticking time-bomb of dementia.
Dementia UK (2014) suggests that there are 850,000 people with dementia with the possibility of increasing to 1 million by 2025. Very, very scary stats but what stats do not present is the human picture behind each dementia case. In most cases there is a family who is witnessing a change of behaviour and eventually the loss of that person as they know them. The very sad thing about dementia is that medicine can slow it down but there is no cure, as yet! Despite this, I feel privileged to work with people who spend each day trying to keep the ‘dementia tide’ at bay.
As a final year student one of the looming milestones is September 2017 – graduation – and where I can potentially begin work. Currently, my training takes place primarily in East London and the natural course is to make a job application for this area. Attending the RCN job fair in September, however, has given me a broader view on the different mental health Trusts across London and nationally – Dorset maybe and the potential it will give me to pursue my hobby sailing as well makes it look pretty good!
Over the next few months I’ll share some of my reflections on my training to become a mental health nurse and my application for jobs in this area. I hope you find it informative and until the next edition … L’chaim!
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