How are you all doing?
You ok? ... you are? ... good
Family ok? ... they're good? ... pleased to hear it.
So, yes, I am back out on placement. I love this part of the training as I get to meet some super people and get to practice all those skills that we learned in Uni'.
It's nice to be in a position to help people. Whether this is attending to personal care, making sure that a person has enough to eat and drink, ensuring timely medication is given, it's an amazing position to be in. Such a privilege....I simply can't find the words to describe it.
In this placement I am working with people living with dementia. Now this is an area that I would like to go into when I hopefully qualify. Have a look at the Dementia Friends website. Maybe you would like to join them and be a Dementia Friend too? I know I am.Seeing the damage that dementia can do to a person can make you appreciate the things you have and take for granted. It is very humbling but also very rewarding too.
So what have I been doing I hear you ask.
Well, to be fair loads. I cannot go into detail about the specifics of what I am doing as I wish to keep confidentiality of the patients.
However, I can say about how the teaching is delivered in this environment. Learning in practice turns me into a kid in a toy-shop.
I am doing things that I have done before such as giving out medication and personal care, but there are things like patient handovers and discussion of patients among the multi disciplinary team or MDT.
The first time I did that was kinda like being chucked in at the deep end but yay, I did it. I used the swan theory.....all graceful on the surface and well not so graceful underneath!!
Learning is also different to any other placement I have had before. They use something called CLiP. This is Collaborative Learning in Practice. Each day you set out what you wish to learn about.
Then you ensure that you have a student from each of the three years. The 3rd year supports the 2nd, and the 2nd supports the 1st. They are then all supervised by a coach and are responsible to their individual mentors. Sounds complicated but it does work.
It helps build leadership skills and nursing skills too.Everyday you complete a learning log that evidences what you chose to learn about and how you achieved this learning.
By filling in the logs every day, it also helps to give evidence for the Assessment of Practice (or AoP) document that we have to complete for Uni'.
So all in all, I think this has great potential for students everywhere. It takes some getting used to for staff as it means change. None of us like change and some will kick back against it.
However, I think its great and look forward to what I can learn in the coming weeks.
I am thinking that the learning logs may be useful for the elective too! we shall see.
Anyways, I am off for coffee.
"No changes there then"
ttfn to you all
K x
