https://www.change.org/p/pay-nz-nursing-students-for-their-work-at-placements
The link above is for a petition via Change.org to help get student nurses paid while on placements in hospitals. As I am brand new to Substack and still trying to find my way around here, I have no idea if the above link works. I also want to talk about them and my stay in the hospital last week.
Last week I had to stay in hospital, so far this would have sounded like an everyday experience that needs no mention. This had taken a lot of pre-planning because it is well known that general anaesthetic causes major switching in people like me who have Dissociative Identity Disorder.
The lining of my post-menopausal womb, words like that do not tumble out easily, had been discovered to be thickened, those hospital folk, like doctors, kept using words like cancer as a way of explaining it. There are certain points along a road like that that Parts of me, the ones that really should be listening to what these people are saying, well they leave the dam room. With the little information, we did have about the procedure for this possible problem called endometrial cancer, we knew an awful thing called a D and C was planned (memories of miscarriages flooded our body and we held our tummy and thought about this word “womb”). Also, a camera was to be inserted, the word inserted is also problematic with our history of abuse and a biopsy, the word biopsy seemed the easiest word to sit with.
Had pre-op meetings with the general anesthesiologist and the surgeon, in which we needed to talk about what is known about dissociation and anaesthesia. For one thing, my and most other DID Systems as we are all known, have a very high pain tolerance due to the high amounts of pain suffered during the abuse suffered. This means we do not go under deeply enough compared to a normal person (the idea of this is terrifying by the way, I mean it is the stuff of nightmares). I had made a Facebook post about my fears and dear friends from my Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) community reached out with fantastic advice which I was able to pass on. The most important advice for me was a band that goes on my forehead and shows brain activity, so they can see that we are deeply under.
They were also all advised to please call in my clinical psychologist to be at the hospital as soon as possible after awakening.
I was to be first up so that I didn’t have to be waiting anxiously for too long. I waited anxiously anyway.
Those socks. I mean, for a start how the hell do you put them on? Blooming Nora if that was an IQ test I would have failed. I nearly fell off the bed trying to put the dam things on. I like that they are knee-high. What’s with the hole at the bottom and yes I did bring them home with me.
Finally, I was wheeled into the dungeon, I mean Jesues wept what a seriously sad-looking room a theatre is. I looked around, eyes wide open. I could feel my heart in my throat. The first chap couldn’t get a line into my hand, so I looked over at the chap on my other side. I guess my eyes spoke to him. He said I am now going to give you lots of drugs to calm you down.
Next second I am in the recovery room. Except I am not really. I can hear a small child screaming in pain. I see her legs are curled up to our chest. Then they are injecting something and the pain settles. So many people. So many machines, beeping. Wires everywhere.
A familiar voice is trying to settle us. They are all talking about us being a child. (Later in therapy, my psychologist would describe her as being very young and so very polite, and terrified of getting anything wrong). Any noise would make us jump out of our skin and scream. A nurse leaned over and said we are going to move you to somewhere a bit quieter, I guess it was.
Then I heard them say she is ageing up. My psychologist leaned over and looked at me and asked if I was back yet. I could feel a teenager was there, so no not yet.
My oxygen kept dropping too low and they kept telling me to take deep breaths, this went on for hours I was told, indeed all through the night as I was woken for those god-awful four hourly checks.
This song just came on my playlist and I just know I would have breathed deeply if only they had just played it.
There were so many nurses and noise and we just couldn’t settle so they arranged for what is called a special nurse to sit with me. It was set at level four, meaning they stayed with me at all times. It took until much later in the afternoon before I was stable enough to be moved upstairs to a women’s surgical ward. The reason also for the special nurses is because of the amnesia side of my dissociation, I would wake up and not know where I was or what was happening. You go to sleep a lot after a general so I was freaking out a lot. Every single one of those nurses was amazing.
All the staff blew me away with their gentle kindness.
The next day when I was a bit more lucid I was able to chat a bit to one of my nurses. It was then I found out that most of them taking care of me were all student nurses, which means a massive amount of the workforce of the hospital are students. While doing the special nursing that she was doing with me she was being paid as she worked for an agency. They all have to do that sort of work as they get so little on their student payments.
What I found appalling is that when they have to go on what is called a placement to another hospital which usually lasts either 6 or 9 weeks, while on that placement they do NOT get paid. In the case of my nurse, her next placement is in a city called Whanganui, which is an hour away from where she lives and studies. That sounds exhausting and horrible.
Student nurses are the backbone and the workhorses of hospitals and we all need to take better care of them.
Please pay student nurses while they are on placements. The world needs more nurses and we won’t get them if we don’t treat the students better.