My Introductory Learning Day

Today's introductory learning day for child health was absolutely brilliant. I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, partly because I was excited, but partly because I'm having trouble sleeping anyway. I woke up at 6am and got ready, I met my college friend at the train station and we headed up to the uni together.

The day started at 9:30 with an introduction from all the staff on the Faculty of Child Health. There were 30-40 of us in this one room and we were told to get up from the table we were sitting at, and basically mingle around the room and talk... I have to admit these kind of icebreakers make me a little nervous and I felt a bit out of place being the one of two males amongst all these women, haha. After this we were given a presentation on what the university expect of us, their values and how we must remain professional at all times within university. We then had a presentation from the clinical lecturer who followed on from this, telling us about the NMC and the code we must adhere to when out on placement, telling us what was and wasn't acceptable. It was really interesting. After this we had a Q&A session where we got to ask all the tutors any questions we wanted, and found out one or two things I didn't actually know, which helped a lot.

After a break came the best part of the day... practical sessions. We started off in the mock children's ward where some real children we in our hospital beds, they were acting of course, but we got to go round to each bed and ask questions to the patient and/or their parent/guardian, asking things like why they were in and what was wrong. It was fascinating to learn some of the questions that should be asked that you initially wouldn't think to ask, that's where the child protection and safeguarding came in, it was brilliant. We then went into the next ward where the simulators were, which held a 9 year old, a toddler and a newborn, the simulators were so life like, feeling their pulses and watching their chests rise and fall were amazing, hearing the 9 year old talk back at you and the baby sims cry made the situations so life like, I really can't wait to begin learning more about observations. The final room was set out like a family clinic, where baby would come to get weighed and measured, etc. It was set up to inform us what kind of things community nurses do, although community nursing isn't of major interest to me, it was fascinating all the same and I'll definitely go into a community placement a lot more open minded.

After lunch we did an A&P session, where we took apart of model that has organs attached to it (you know what I mean?) and we had to take all the organs off and then replace them as quickly as we could. We also has an A&P quiz to test our basic knowledge, my group didn't win (booo) haha. We had two current third years there too who gave us some great advice, and said that we should spend the next 4 weeks brushing up on our A&P knowledge, which is something I will definitely do. I met some wonderful people and I'm looking forward to spending the next 3 years sharing this journey with them. All the staff are really friendly and so approachable. Overall it was an incredible day and I really, really, reeeeeally cannot wait to start officially.

We got sent an email during the day which contained our official reading list and our 3 year course plan which gave us dates, such as when we're in university, on placement, when we have exams and annual leave, etc, exciting.

Ooooh, and when we first went in, we were given a name badge and a goody bag, check out my two little goodies...

 Nurse USB Stick

Spongy Male Nurse (My Fave)