How I became a School Nurse

[chuckie]

A,D,5,6,7: From there to here and beyond!!


Nursing was never a career that I had given thought to in the past. My future was destined to be lived out in the military or the police, until both choices made it clear that I was not for them! Having had several jobs, moving from one to the next whilst trying to get a career in either the Police or the Army, I decided to give the NHS a try. By this time I had been married for five years and had two daughters and felt that it was time for me to take a job that would provide some stability and career opportunities. I saw an “A Grade” Health Care Assistant post advertised at my local hospital on something called an MAU. Unsure what an MAU was I applied and was offered an interview so decided to investigate what the ward was all about. I found out that MAU stands for Medical Admissions Unit, I was still no better informed but went for the interview anyway. To my surprise I was offered a full time post and started almost straight away, completing my induction and working on the ward within a week of my interview. I soon found out what an MAU is, it is a fast paced, busy, noisy, exciting place that people go to once A+E have stabilised them or the GP has referred in directly. This was hard work, completing 13 hour shifts cleaning, making beds, mopping up patients and after patients but every minute was exciting and enjoyable. I worked hard on this ward and gave it my all, listening to and learning from more experienced and senior staff, and within two months of being on the ward they had offered to second me on my current pay to start my Registered Nurse training. I started at university two months after joining the NHS and stuck at it for three long hard years, working on many wards and completing lots of assignments and college work.
Once I completed my RN training I returned as a “D Grade” to the MAU from where I started, and now it was time for me to start learning how to become a nurse. I didn’t want to learn to be just any nurse but wanted to be a good nurse, in fact I wanted to be the best nurse I could be. This was the ward to be on then, as I would get to see most of the “gory” things that would motivate, stimulate and excite me, causing me to start forming my initial beliefs, ideas and future plans. I enjoyed this ward and made a point of learning from the best, watching, questioning and listening to all of the staff who came to the ward. Now, me being me I was never afraid to challenge any other professional or multidisciplinary team member and fortunately for me this was generally well received and allowed me to vastly and rapidly increase my knowledge. During my time on the ward I had many strange and unusual experiences, which will inevitably make more stories in the future, but more importantly they made me want to move onwards and upwards. This desire for change lead to me moving into the local Walk in Centre, seeing, treating and discharging my own patients, again taking the opportunity to increase my knowledge and experience, now in a different area of nursing. Now I felt that I was doing well and working hard and although I had not been qualified very long I was starting to look for promotion although fate or rather agenda for change was to transpire against me. Just as management agreed that I was due promotion to an “E Grade” agenda for change was introduced and I became a “Band 5” nurse. Hmm, I was starting to get bored again and felt that with AFC on a “Band 5” I was not going to get any promotion soon without completing further training or experience. Seeing an opportunity then, lead me into School Nursing, I moved back into a seconded “Band 5” post at university for a further year to complete my public health degree whilst working as a School Nurse in some local schools and on completion of my degree I remained a “Band 5” for some time with my seconding trust before being promoted. This promotion came with a cost in the form of a move away from home, to work just outside London. I did however get my “Band 6” post exactly two years after qualifying as an RN and was managing a small School Nursing team comprised of myself, a “Band 5” School Nurse, a “Band 3” Nursery Nurse and an administrator. This post was a real baptism of fire with some very quick, hard lessons to be learnt, in Child Protection especially. This was a “Fab” job allowing me my first opportunity to manage a team in my way with new ways of working implemented to ease workloads and increase productivity. Being away from home for this period allowed me to start thinking about doing other things to keep me interested and the result was that I started to write articles for publication in local and national journals. This writing became a bit of a bug as well as an opportunity for me to be able to complete health promotion on a larger scale than that of my normal day job, ensuring that many public health agendas can be achieved simultaneously with child protection.