[This entry is seriously backdated. Because I am a lazy little... well, okay, I'm lazy.]

Oh. Well. After all my fretting, the placement doesn't actually seem all that bad, all things considered. I mean, no matter that I don't like the hospital I'm at, and the work seems pretty heavy (well, it is a surgical ward after all) and I really wish we'd already moved into the new building because the ward itself really could do with being rather better designed, and I'm utterly exhausted and my feet are aching.

Never mind that. The placement itself doesn't seem anywhere near as bad as I feared.

At least it's not the first ward I was sent to - the culture here feels a little different. The staff are younger and seem more flexible, for a start. Of course, with seven weeks and four days to go, I have plenty of time to change my mind but first impressions wise it could have been much, much worse.

It helps that I have a good mentor. On the ward an hour and she'd already sent me down to see a colonoscopy. Which may not sound that great to most people but if you're a nursing student it's actually pretty fascinating in an 'anatomy in action' kind of way. It's interesting to be able to match up actual human anatomy to textbook drawings and the occasional slide. Annoyingly, she's due to go on Maternity leave at the beginning of next month, but I'll see what I can get done before that time. I really hope I can go see an operation. I love it in the operating room!

There are far too many students on the ward though, and that's annoying because it means that it might be hard to get things done. Doesn't help that it's three third-year students and me. I'm at the ass end of my second year right now, and that it shouldn't be any big deal for me to get into the third year, three third years and me is not a good state of affairs, not least of which because I appear to be coming in for some not-so-subtle talking down to by the girl on her 'manage,ent' placement. She's a nice person, but I wish she didn't talk down to me quite so much. I may be in the year below, but I'm not some baffled kid on her first ward placement, I do know some things.

Oh yeah - and the bedpan washer is broken. This is bad.

Why is it bad? well, god damn, it's the freaking bedpan washer, do I have to draw you a picture? Pretty foul. But luckily I've had almost two years to get used to this, so this doesn't bother me as much as it would have done on my first placement. Then I would have just been utterly grossed out. Now I'm more bothered about it being bad for hygiene. Too bad it's unlikely to get fixed since the ward's being wound down. At least I have a strong stomach, I suppose - or at least I do for things like this, though how this sits with my suffering from terrible travel sickness (at 23, for Christ's sake!) I have no idea...

On the other hand, the good karma I'm accumulating from doing this horrible job just has to go some way to abnegating my Angst Ficcer's Sins. Surely. Which means it won't matter if I write fic on the bus on the way in, with any luck.