Practical Placement No 1- DONE!

England, England, England, so crazy England. Nice, kind and easy-going people, adventures, discovering…Oh, TIME flies! Sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough hours to discover and to be honest, it is a cruel reality. Well I’ve tried to do my best to use my spare time very, very, very efficiently and so far I’ve spent a really great time :) So now something about the placement…

At first the most important thing during a day: TEA! People in England are really solving their problems with tea and biscuits. Conversation in the morning (in the hospital) starts like this: “Good morning, how are you? Would you like to have a cupper?” and of course with biscuits covered with chocolate or with some other delicates. Not a bad way to start morning if you want to gather few kilos during this exchange, haha, or +10! 

I did my first placement in the Oncology and Haematology Day Unit in Ingham Wing of South Tyneside District Hospital. There are a lot of treatments and services offered for both Oncology and haematology patients: intravenous cytotoxic chemotheraphy and monoclonal therapies, intravesicular chemo/ immunotheraphy, intramuscular chemo and other supportive therapies. Just few to mention: blood transfusion, i.v. antibiotics, i.v. bisphosphinates and immunoglobulins and also subcutaneous hormonal theraphies. And about the services offered: insertion (and of course removal) and ongoing care of skin tunneled and pheripherally inserted central lines and midlines, pheripheral and central venous sampling, bone marrow biopsies and venesections. So as you can imagine, staff has to be specialized and with a lot of experience before working in OHDU unit. The nursing staff does the holistic assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of care, what brings about a huge responsibility to them. On the other hand it gives an opportunity to carry out your expertise for the patients’ best and all are done by using strict protocols and procedures.

So what I actually did in my first practical placement except tried to understand Geordie? What actually wasn’t so hard than I assumed earlier, oh well, it really depends on the speaker. That reminded me about the funny situation with patient (original Geordie): Patient came for a chemo in the afternoon. I was going to introduce myself to him before starting pre-evaluation and the actual treatment:

Me: “Hello! I believe that we haven’t met yet?”

Patient: “Yes!”

Me: “No!”

Patient: “Yes!”

Me: “No!”

…

(The “conversation” repeated itself several times)

After that we both started to laugh because the conversation took the same form as in one of the Monty Python sketch (The British comedy group). The situation was so funny!

My role, as a student in the very first week, was to observe all the unique features and the habits (and so on) which appears in the unit. After first week I was able to do more. I have developed my language skills and I feel like I’ve more courage to speak English than earlier. The most important lesson was to learn communication with patients with cancer; to understand and support patient’s assets as entirety. I also improved my clinical skills during this period; know-how to handle different kind of (chemo) medicines, rehearsed taking blood samples and carries out the patient calls with the Hickman-line. What comes to co-operation; I’ve had opportunities to participate to different kind of clinics and I believe that those clarified the path what patient go through in its entirety.

I’m looking forward to start my second practical placement period tomorrow in children ward although I have to do shifts. That will cause some difficulties because I don’t have enough time to sleep between evening and morning shift (maybe 4-5 hours). But I decided to manage somehow: The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination!