As I mentioned in my previous blog, I've had my own experiences receiving nursing. Lets just say it was not the happiest few months. I did however manage to turn these events from life's bricks of coal into the proverbial nuggets of gold.
When I decided to write about my experiences of being a relative, I was in the process of applying and taking up employment in another place. I felt that the only way forward was take a chance on a new experience, go out and find life and new challenges because if you don't...it could be too late and life has escaped you. My mind then started to think specifically about this sentiment and my evolving nursing career. I have worked with some nurses who have trained, worked and would soon be retiring...all in the same hospital and more alarmingly in the same speciality or department for the last 20 to 30 years. to me, this felt as if it would be limiting my options, especially in the area of practise I work in. I knew that if I didn't change what I was doing, I would become resentful and almost territorial over my area and work...I worried this would tempt me into a trap of becoming cynical. I decided that the only thing to do was to keep it fresh, learn something new.
I took a job in the northwest, about 160miles away from my old job, family, friends and more urgently a department that frankly... felt stale. It is still working in the same area of practise but a change in surgical speciality. I've never considered it to be a bad thing to expand your knowledge, skill and experience in nursing, but is it possible to change too frequently? I got to thinking about my student days when I spent time of around 5-13 weeks at a time in a variety of different specialities and got an insight into the specialist care and treatment in these areas. I enjoyed the variety and the change. when I qualified and began working, it dawned on me that I was based in that speciality as a permanent member of staff...that was scary. I knew I could change jobs and learn knew skills if I wanted but it was very different to being a student. Even when I went to one placement which subsequently became the area of practise I work in, it grew stale and I longed to go back to the ward.
I have always had an interest in peri-operative nursing since I was a first year student but it occurred to me that I qualified as a nurse four years ago and I am already in my fourth job! some nurses believe that if you change to often and try to expand your knowledge, it can have the opposite effect and be detrimental to your career leading to burnout for example, it may also lead employers to a false conclusion that you are unable to commit to a job and may led to them feeling that you are not the candidate they are looking for as you won't stick around for long. I do worry about this because often I have taken a job, learnt the basics of the speciality and decided that I don't want to continue with it as I am bored...strangely at the point where I am just beginning to feel more confident in my role and want to learn something new instead of going into the speciality in more depth. I also grow to develop a lack of tolerance for my other colleagues and they frequently irritate me after about 18 months and I decide it is better to move on.
What does it take to keep a nurse in a speciality though? especially someone as fickle as myself? I think you have to reach a point where you still want to learn but are willing to adapt and move as needed, I am a firm believer that it makes for better nurses the more multi-skilled we are, it keeps us grounded and allows us to respect our fellow nurses more, for example, in my last job, I was the only nurse in the department who regularly took shifts out of the theatre and on the wards with the aim of keeping up the skills that I had brought from the wards. Many of my fellow nurses in the theatres were not shy about saying that they would never go to work on the wards again...ever.
maybe I am just fickle but so far, I have managed to stay in this speciality for the longest of all my nursing jobs. I have plans to develop and take on further education but I have felt able to settle within theatres, I may not move jobs but I do plan to try other sub-specialities within theatre...but I just hope I don't get bored again and try to take off just as I get my confidence.
