It’s been a while since I felt this way, but I feel like a proper nurse this week! I’ve been back on the wards now for a couple of weeks with no distractions (apart from Matt, my mother and the never-ending saga that is Brexit), and it’s been really good to reconnect with my ladies on Eden Bay. We’ve had some right characters of late, which is fab because it helps me to get to know each person as an individual. I’m determined not to start talking about patients in terms of bed numbers or conditions – I learnt my lesson with that one last year! I know we’re not supposed to have favourites but Gloria and Claire are contenders for this title at the moment. They have such stories to tell about their lives, despite being poorly, that they keep the rest of the bay thoroughly entertained. Gloria was an army wife who travelled the world with her husband for a million years. She tells the most hilarious stories about what they used to get up to, including tales about how he used to go ...

I’ve been thinking long and hard recently about where I’m going with my nursing career.  Working with the students over the past couple of weeks has made me feel that I can’t afford to let time pass me by – at this rate one of those students will fly past me on the career ladder and end up telling me what to do!  At the moment, I don’t even have a mentorship certificate to my name, never mind anything else, so it’s time I grew some stones and got a grip.  I need direction. Training and development isn’t going to happen if I stay as a bank and agency nurse with temporary gigs, and I’m fast outgrowing the feeling of being a newly qualified nurse. At this rate, I will be a stale nurse with stale skills – a wannabe turning in to a has-been.  But the more I think about it, the less confident I become. I need someone to convince me that I can actually do this, that there is a role out there for me that isn’t just filling gaps when permanent staff can’t be...