Everything is fine. Until it’s not.

So many many people.

I trained in London, which from talking to others who didn’t, sounds like a unique experience. I was lucky to train there, I saw a lot.

Training to be a nurse is an odd experience. You move into halls like every other student, try to take full advantage of Freshers week, show up for some lectures and seminars, and then BAM. It’s four weeks later, you’re stood on a strange ward, in a strange hospital, in a really strange uniform, and you’re a student nurse.

Now, recently, where I’ve been working, the student nurses have very helpful lanyards which say which year they are in. This is probably a double edged sword, but when I was a student, parents and patients knew your uniform meant you were a student, but depending on the speed of your walk and how well adjusted you looked, they would assume you were near the end of your training. Not painfully new.

As a student nurse, predominantly in first year your job is to show up, learn, try and do what you can when you feel confident. You need to learn how to build relationships with families and patients, and how to communicate with others in the multi-disciplinary team (MDT). The MDT is the rest of the team caring for that patient.

Now to be honest. My first shift was far from ideal. My shift started at 07:30. I woke up before my alarm, ate 3 weetabix, re-did my pony tail about 7 million times, and set off unreasonably early for work. On arrival, it took me a good ten minutes to get up the courage to press the buzzer to get onto the ward (glad I left early). I get shown by a friendly nurse where to leave my stuff and get changed. Midway through getting my freshly ironed uniform on I realise with horror this is where everyone who works on the ward gets changed in there. Fun. More slight embarrassment about my underwear that has mice on, and that I realise that my bag with my lunch in is now under about 20 other bags. I abandon it, to go and wait in the staffroom nervously. I am corralled with about three more students into handover for the ward, where we are all early (obviously). We all painfully try to figure out where we can stand that makes us the most invisible. The nurses start to roll in, and handover begins. After about forty seconds or so, the noise starts to seem far away, so for some reason, my nerve shot brain rationalises that I should close my eyes so I can hear better.

If you guessed it, well done. If you didn’t, I don’t blame you, I didn’t believe it either, and quite frankly I still struggle too.

I decked it. Passed out completely.

My friend who was there said that I dropped my water bottle and pen and she saw my head come forward – she assumed I was bending forward to pick them up, however, apparently my entire body just fell straight. I hit my head on the foot of the metal examination bed. Luckily, my glasses protected my head from real damage but that took my faint to a full period of unconsciousness.

As I swim back to consciousness I get a horrible feeling somewhere in my body that whatever has just happened was wrong, and that I shouldn’t have done whatever the thing is that has just happened.

Unbeknownst to me, when I passed out, they pulled the emergency buzzer, called the whole adult crash team to the room, and escorted the staff in that room out. Another one of my friends who in the room began crying because she thought I had died. Thats how sack of potatoey my body was as it fell.

So I wake up to find myself on the floor, 4 members of the crash team with their hands on me, holding me down. I’ve been unconscious for about 5 minutes. I immediately try to sit up, as quite frankly I didn’t know what was happening. As soon as I do, a sickening pain in my temple appears and I lie straight back down. My vision in my right eye is nearly gone. I’m vaguely aware of what’s going on; someone is pricking my finger to see what my blood sugar level is, someone else is hooking me up to a monitor. I get asked a few basic questions, my name, do I have epilepsy, diabetes or something that would make me pass out or have a seizure. It’s a no to all, I say I’m fine, and try to reassure everyone as the scale of this humiliation hits. I try to stand, and all of a sudden feel like I’m about to deck it again. They sit me on the bed as I try to blink the vision back into my right eye. My head is painfully throbbing. The crash team, happy I am no longer trying to do anything too dramatic, pack up and leave. And I am placed in a wheelchair and taken down to A and E (by the Ward Sister, who I two days later, introduced myself to, and she just looked at me like a had three heads, and then explained why I looked familiar… the shame).

On arrival to A and E they give me a form to fill in, I rudely state I can’t see so probably can’t fill in the form. At this point a girl who I know vaguely from my year takes the from, this girl in the future becomes my flat mate and my close close friend. She fills in the form and I am taken to majors, as I’m behaving a bit oddly. They take me to a cubicle and a doctor starts to talk to me, asking me questions, including my pain. He says ‘ 1 to 10’ 1 in this case is a tiny bit sore, and 10 is my head has been chopped off. I boldy answer back 3 after halving it in my head as I know I’m a wimp. As I start to rethink this I realise I’m about to throw up. I ask for a bowl, promptly vomit, and then try to return back to the conversation at hand. At this point the Doctor is not so impressed, gets me a cannula, lots of IV fluids (fluids that go straight into my veins) and some IV paracetamol.

Anyway, to cut an already long story shorter, I got a concussion, 4 hours in A and E, and a reputation from my first 15 minutes on the ward.

My advice? Don’t pass out.

My other advice? Laugh about it. Apparently, a lot of people do it, or something similar.

K x