My third year placement is on an acute mental health ward for male patients under the age of 65 years old. It’s my first acute placement, and I was nervous, as I had no idea what to expect. But it went well. This is the first placement I’ve had in a while where I feel comfortable and confident in what I’m doing and don’t feel ‘lost’.

However it wasn’t all smooth sailing. There’s three sisters on the ward, and I was on the same shift as one of them for my first two days. The second day was really bad. The day before I had spent most of my time reading policies rather than getting to know the ward structure, so when I was next on shift, I had no idea that there was a staff allocation sheet and that I had been given a few tasks to do. So when the sister noticed I wasn’t doing one of my tasks, she criticised me in front of my mentor, and in front of other staff at different times.

She’s a third year!! I thought she was a first year!

Do you not know how to make a hospital bed; what about infection control?

blah blah fucking blah.

She was annoying. I almost cried because she was putting me down. Excuse the language in this post, but bitch, I should’ve been finished by now, I’ve had a tough year, you know NOTHING about me, so why make this assumption that I have no knowledge and have no idea about what I’m doing? I haven’t made a hospital bed in TWO years, and you can’t expect me to know everything just because you’ve been working in the same job for 15 centuries.

Thankfully she’s just one irritating blip on an otherwise straightforward placement. My mentor is nice and really helpful, and he had a chat with me the following day, which helped ease my thoughts and feelings of inadequacies. I hope if I’m successful in this course and become a senior nurse one day, I don’t become so harsh like that.

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