hi! I am a third year adult nurse and I have just been invited for a neonatal nurse interview I had a critical care placement with probably half a spoke day with the neonatal team and I was completely enthralled with the speciality. I did a lot of reading about the speciality and applied with a lot of hope and I’m quite fortunate to be invited for an interview but I have no idea where to start preparation, it’s a NQN role so I’m assuming they don’t have massive expectations. All I know so far is that, there’s going to be a maths assessment ( I’m hoping it’s safe medicate math and not regular math lol ). Just asking for any advice on how to prepare for this interview, any advice on articles/ professional issues in neonatology or types of questions I can expect. Thanks

I am currently working as night shift nurse, have been qualified since end of last year. Ideally I want to work on the hospitals as this is familiar with my placement training. So far I’ve been unlucky applying for hospitals, maybe it’s due to my CV or my interview skills, but I will continue to persevere.

So far nightshift is killing me, I feel I am going nowhere and want to learn new clinical skills, plus I feel my experience is still limited. When you’re alone I find my self questioning how I am performing. In care homes I also feel the day and night shift rivalry which is highly off putting where I feel day shift like to look for mistakes and complain about these. Whilst I feel the carers on with me are so far good, some I find irritating with having to micromanage and constantly remind to do. Documentation and time management I’ve also found to be difficult at times.

I would like any advice or recommendations from more experienced nurses or those whom have been involved in a similar situation. Also from some nurses I’ve been told care homes are not the ideal place to start or in other words it’s hit or miss some adapt well into the job whilst others struggle.

Thank you

Is it true that progression is much faster in a&e than on wards?

I am a RN, in Ireland i have always wanted to be a doctor, but didn’t have the grades was surprised i got straight into nursing school. If i went back to become a doctor i don’t think i would be able to do it in Ireland, even since they changed the LC this year is there anywhere else in the world this transition is possible, and more accessible. Im not fully set on it i am just wondering my options. Thank you

I do think being motivated by delivering good patient care is old school and not reflective of today's staff.

"Why do you want to be a nurse, it should be to help patients?".

"Why do you work so hard? It should be to help patients".

This is stuff I have heard too much.

Our job is to deliver effective patient care. But is that what motivates you?

Can you not just be interested in A&P?

Can you not just want to work somewhere where redundancy is very little?

Where there is a good option for over time?

Most international nurses I know became nurses to escape back home, not because the ghost of Florence nightingale came to them in a dream. And they were all very good nurses

I think if someone does thier job well and supports their team, then who cares what the motivation is?

Who cares why they are working hard?

I'm working hard because I want to get promoted or just be better at my job, not for my patients. Why is that wrong?

Can we stop trying to lump all nurses in one collective mindset. If a nurse is good at their job then it doesnt matter "why they are here".

Hello!

I’m super excited to be starting my first staff nurse role next week, and I was wondering if there was any guidance or etiquette in terms of posting an update to LinkedIn?

I’ve heard some people prefer to wait a while and settle in but tbh I’d prefer to update my title sooner as I’m proud to be joining my trust.

I want to preface this by saying that I am always outwardly kind and compassionate towards my clients, but inwardly really struggling at the moment. My background is mostly working with SMI (Serious Mental Illness) which has its own challenges but the client base are generally very grateful for your support. I now work on the other end of the spectrum with lower level mental health issues and I’m finding people very entitled/with quite unreasonable demands. Some common themes-

- Increasing lack of resilience to normal life stressors and trying to pathologise normal reactions to stress.
- Requesting bipolar diagnosis when they have difficulties with their mood and kicking off when told they don’t meet the criteria for said diagnosis.
- Lack of personal responsibility and accountability. Kicking off when staff can’t solve problems which are completely out of our control and often self inflicted.
- Almost every other person coming as newly diagnosed with ADHD through a private clinic or “suspected” ADHD and expecting everything to be adapted to them even though we’re not a specialist service. Endless excuses as to why ADHD is a barrier to learning coping strategies.
- Resistance to learning to sit with or tolerate difficult emotions.

I’m just drained by it all, the numbers of these types of referrals into our service are absolutely relentless and never ending.

Hi!

So a job came up recently at my old workplace (niche job requiring additional qualifications), i’d love to go back but part time or as bank. The ad is for full time permanent, is it most likely my application will get screened out with a big fat no thank you?

Thanks 🥴

I am a NQN and have just started on a ward.

In a year I plan to move to Aus with family after I hit the required hours to be appliciable for their reg board (1700 hours). Between now and then I really want to be the best nurse I can be. I want to be really pro-active with my development

Considering how some nurses get band 6 less than a year after qualfying (a go on to be very good), I know if I am ready to work hard, I can become a really good nurse after a year.

What advice do people have for me. Any specific reading I can do?

I made another post but (not from my trust) I have been offered a £1000 grant that can be spent on courses/ books so if anyone has any specific course they can recommened.

Hi everyone, I have been a nurse for 4 years, my background is in District Nursing and community specialist palliative care. I have recently got a new job on a hospice inpatient unit and I will be working 12.5 hour shifts, a mix of days and nights. I haven’t done shift work since I was a student and although this is my dream job I’m a bit nervous about it. Does anyone have any advice, tips for things they do to make their life easier or anything I should buy? TIA x

If only people were as proactive in acknowledging their mortality; prepping for a time they aren’t here anymore and having affairs in order.

Sadly, it comes down to, especially for elderly patients, constant readmissions and nil thought given to advanced planning and maybe asking if they want that hospital admission. Ditto taking care of affairs, even when being admitted for surgery, they don’t take the time to ask what should happen if things don’t work out and they may be face end of life or life changing outcomes. Always written off as “they are a fighter” or “positive thinking”

I have obtained access to a grant where I can claim back up to £1000 worth of courses/ books.

I am literally only 2 weeks into a job on general medical ward however I want to go into ICU when there is a vaccancy.

Any recommendations?

Injured my wrist in January and it gets super achy and sore after hours of documentation (hospital where I work is almost completely paper based). I was thinking that maybe a thicker pen would help reduce writing strain and I've had a quick look on Amazon, but if anyone has had similar experiences I'd love to hear what helped you 💜💜

(I've seen physio at occupational health, and they're of the opinion that my ongoing discomfort is tendonitis, in case anyone is curious)

Hi everyone,

I’m a newly qualified RMN working in acute adult inpatient mental health and I’m looking for recommendations for useful CPD to develop my knowledge, skills and confidence in the role.

I’m particularly interested in anything that would be beneficial for working on an acute ward, whether that’s online courses, qualifications, study days, books, podcasts or other learning resources.

I’d love to hear what CPD other RMNs have found useful in practice, particularly anything free or accessible through the NHS.

Are there any courses, qualifications or areas of specialist knowledge you’d recommend prioritising early in your career?

Thanks!

I’m quite interested in safeguarding and have some history of working in the DV field. Very much like clinical working and don’t want to be in an office all day, so I’m not necessarily interested in going 100% down that path if it meant foregoing clinical.

I just wondered about roles in which there’s quite a lot of overlap. There is quite a bit already in paeds for obvious reasons in terms of recognising and acting upon concerns, but I’d love to explore this aspect a bit more and have a better understanding of whether it’s something to pursue professionally, and what roles people do in this area

Hello. I am a third year nursing student studying in England. Me and my partner want to move to Scotland (specifically Glasgow) when I finish university as that’s where all our family live and I was just wondering when should I start applying for jobs in Scotland and how is the job market for newly qualified.

Thank you in advance!!!!

I recently applied for a new role and was invited to book an interview, which I did on Friday. However, I've just received an email stating I am unsuccessful? I've never experienced this before so I am just wondering if this has ever happened to anyone else? Or if any recruiting managers could weigh in on potential reasons for this?

The only reason I can think of is I asked for reasonable adjustments (a copy of the questions written down during the interview) but I've asked for this in previous interviews and it has been fine. Just feeling a little deflated atm as I'm desperate for a new role due to the stress and toxicity in my current role.

Edit: thank you to everyone who replied

I, like many of us, am increasingly looking at ways of creating additional income streams to help suppliment my earnings from my "day job" and have always liked the idea of the forces.

I'm now very stable in my career, so much so that I'm looking at ways to earn a little extra scratch but also do something meaningful, something that'll keep the grey matter going with different skills that I'm currently used to.

However, I'm torn between doing something in the Army as a Reservist, and going down the on-call firefighter route.

This is the upshot:

Fire station is within 5 minutes.

Nearest barracks/reserve unit is ~50 minutes away

Fire fighting requires a relatively significant amount of on-call time. Which for me would mostly be evenings, multiple nights per week, and likely two of the 4 weekends a month.

Army requires no on-call and has no minimum "commitment". However, in order to maximise the potential for training and the end of year tax free "bounty", it's recommended to do one drill night per week, one to two weekends a month, and often a two week exercise "residential".

Both require multiple years until fully qualified, but the Army unit is both infantry and a medical squadron. If I was staying medical I would be looking to go down the combat medic route as it would be more infantry adjacent and afford me new skills to learn - particularly with things like BATLS in mind

I'd really appreciate if anyone here had any experience with either of these two along side their nursing career, or indeed any input is welcome.

Hi worked as a child nurse for 1 year 4 months after I graduated in October 2023. I have been away from nursing for 2 years (took a gap year and then have been working as an Alzheimer’s early stage carer for one person) and will be returning to nursing hopefully within the next 4 months. As I am still in the recruitment process and I am aware it takes a long time.
I feel like I have forgot everything and want to feel prepared/ more confident to return to my child nursing role.
Can anyone please give me a list of things I should study/ revise before I return so I can feel more confident and less anxious to return. Please any information/ areas of study I need to look at. Please write them below. Thank you so so much. I really appreciate it.

Yet again NHS staff given another real-terms pay cut.

I’m a student in my final year rapidly advancing towards getting my PIN and the more I think about qualifying the more the sense of dread forms within me about re-entering the shitshow. And when I see the unions running through “We’re outraged” then accepting the increase without even a single fight I’m pissed.

Now I know from my time as a HCA, it’s very easy to roll over and just complain about the system and how it’s unfair before continuing our shift. There is so much going on in our personal lives and shifts that cause our only cause of action to be lamenting during free moments and online by the looks of it.

But I’m curious, how do we make the unions actually fight back? Even in the US, their unions aren’t afraid to show teeth - and their healthcare system is an abomination to everything I believe in. I appreciate they do more than just collectively bargain and I’ve heard how union reps can help with protecting individual jobs when staff have been wronged but seriously how many times are we meant to just complain and do nothing about it. We are being taken advantage of.

The last strike I remember was back in 2022 and it was brief. Frankly, I want a long and painful one because I truly believe the government needs to understand the damage they have done on the NHS I grew up believing was the jewel of the modern world.

I want Nursing to separate from the AfC.

I want an end to this nonsense of skeleton staffing by design until CQC comes by then suddenly we’re well stocked.

I want pushback on the de-skilling that’s starting to occur amongst the profession as more and more restrictive policies and legal frameworks are introduced.

Fuck it I don’t want to work a shift knowing that I’d be blamed for a patient attacking/racially abusing me without repercussions.

Now all these require a strong union and members willing not willing to accept the status quo and temporarily suffer to get better conditions. So realistically, I would like some insight on how to actually change things, what can we as staff do to actually make that happen? I’m still young and naive so maybe I have a bit too much hope about it but I would like to know how we could actually achieve more than just a 2.4% “pay rise”?

I need to rant.
I’m a mental health nurse on a settled rehab ward. We have few admissions and discharges, and not many incidents compared to the wards where I used to work.
And yet, the paperwork is insane. I literally sit at a keyboard for 12 hours a day, and I still fail audits and struggle to keep up with my named nurse paperwork.
We had an admission last week, and the admission pack had over 100 points on it. What has the NHS become?
Even training /supervision feels like a full-time job.
The sad thing is that none of this seems to make any real difference to patient care. I find it genuinely depressing.
How do people cope?

Do you have a 🤡 at your unit?

I work in an icu, I'm wondering if all are like this at the minute, or always!
We have a unit matron, band 7s doing co ordinating, admin days sometimes on the foor.
Then we have 6s, one 'in charge' of a different area and a group of band 5s.
I've always noticed that when there's an emergency, management tend to crawl out of their offices and watch, b7s sometimes get involved but it all depends who it is. But more recently it's like theyre actively coming out looking for faults (no compliments) nothing has been said in unit meetings about any issues so those I've spoken to also can't understand where it's come from, like if there is issues speak to the team?
Asking b5 nurses that have been on the unit a long time if they're competent to be assisting with intubations, watching on from the nurses station/peering into the room. Not so slyly as it's putting the team on edge, expecting b6's to know every little detail throughout the day of all the patients, like your not busy assisting with hygiene/rolls/meds/procedures (points throughout the shift yes but I'm not sitting at a computer all day repeatedly going through all patients documents to ensure people are doing their jobs right).
Past few weeks the b7's have gone to individuals with 'matron said or matron wants' without any reasoning or the matron even discussing with us first

Hi,
The title is fairly self explanatory.
This is in regards to my Fibromyalgia and Hypermobility diagnoses’ alongside my working life upon qualifying.
During my time as a STN I have been made to feel bad for utilising reasonable adjustments as I am very open with all my health issues because I prioritise my comfort in regards to my health in my daily life.
I can imagine I will still be made to feel this way to some extent upon qualifying and Im worried about how being integrated into a team where I have reasonable adjustments such as longer or more frequent breaks to offload pain on my back.
I would like to know what has anyone else’s experiences been with having reasonable adjustments and fitting into a team.
Have you faced that judgment? how did you handle it?