Today I walked, and walked and walked and walked and walked.
Today I shadowed a site practitioner.
When you are on the ward you are focused on your patients, and I’m not yet far enough through my training to be considering the leadership side. That apparently comes in year three, when according to my university structure I am deemed competent enough.
Sometimes you forget that your ward is not the sole one operating in the hospital, that there are actually heaps of other ones and patients constantly streaming in through A&E.
The site practitioners role is to manage patient flow from A&E to MAU and SAU. But not only that, they also manage transfer between wards and help solve any transport issues.
They also have a lot of targets to hit, priority is to ensure that no patient on A&E overstays that magical 4 hour figure.
They firefight, they listen to moans and groans and field the politics between wards.
The chap I was following did this all with a smile on his face, remembered every staff members name who he bumped into and did not stop (bar bed flow meetings) for 8 hours. Phew!
Insightful to see the back work that goes into keeping the hospital functioning.
Student Nurse Alert 