My Not-So Noble Reason For Becoming A Nurse

I haevn't written anything for a few weeks. I've been really busy and, also, it's been a struggle debating what to write about next. In previous articles I've discussed recruitment, selection, induction and atmospheres and I debated writing something about "my time as a care assistant". But I worked as a care assistant for a total of six years, if you include the bank work I did whilst at university and that would likely not be the most interesting article.

Instead I decide to write what could be deemed a controversial article. I appreciate that this might not paint me in the best light, but I feel that this is a story that people could take positives from, if they read it in the right way.

I would love to tell everyone that I became a nurse because it felt like a natural progression from care assistant to "the next step" in my care career - that I felt that I had achieved most or all of what I could as a care assistant and could help more people as a nurse. I guess that I could argue that those were my thoughts when I took the plunge and made the application. But the truth was that it was arrogance and frustration that made me take that next step.

Looking back at my time as a care assistant, I realise now that I would have been very difficult to work with - I certainly would have struggled to manage me. I do feel that I was good at the role - I was caring, I listened to people I cared for and I was willing to work extra if necessary. However, I was also very task-orientated and I would do my best to ensure that the work got done quicker - at the end of the day, everyone needs to get up and have breakfast by a certain time and go to the toilet and all the other tasks that need doing and that was my main focus for the day; I had to work towards the next task. When breakfast was finished then people needed to sit in armchairs to get pressure relief and then people needed to go to the toilet and then they needed lunch and so on and so on.

I think that was indicative of the culture that was at Castleford House at the time. The staffing levels and/or skill mix didn't always lend itself to having an environment where people who recieved care were able to have positive stimulation or meaningful occupation from care staff. It took a lot of effort to change that and it's something I'm still working on at the moment, to be honest. When I took over as manager it took me about six months to break staff out of the habit of leaving people in the dining room after lunch whilst they were wheeled, conveyor-belt style, one at a time to the toilet and then into an armchair until everyone had been.

As a care assistant I was full of myself and thought I knew best. I can remember, clearly, how when a resident who was immobile had a lot of pain in their left leg. The leg was rotated and I swore blind they had broken their hip. I told everyone that they needed to go to hospital and the nurses weren't doing their jobs properly. How he had broken his hip when he hadn't walked since he came to Castleford and weighed about twenty stone was irrelevent; I was extremely vocal and didn't even feel silly when the pain was found to be caused by arthritis. I feel very silly now, looking back.

We had one particular shift where things had been hard work. We had been short-staffed and I had been running around trying to ensure that the work was done. I was one of those people who would run around and do all the work without being asked and then moan that nobody else had pulled their weight. It was something like day four in a row for me. I was tired and frustrated and I very clearly remember that it was about an hour until home time and I walked past the nurse's office and both the nurses on shift were sat in the office, drinking freshly-made tea and laughing at something.

This made me extremely angry. There was me, slogging my guts out to get work done and they had time to sit and drink tea and laugh and joke?!?! It stuck in my mind so much that I can vividly remember that picture in my head about twelve years later. I seethed for the rest of the shift about it. What gave them the right to do that when I was working so hard? And, what was worse, was they were paid more than me too!!!

I absolutely understand, looking back, that I was clueless about their role and the stress that they also might have gone through during that shift. That could have been their first break and proper drink of the shift. But I did not think of that at the time. When I got home I showered, still contemplating my anger towards their perceived laziness and then I took my laptop out and spent about an hour or two applying to the two nearest universities for a Mental Health Nursing degree. My reasoning - if they did their training and were able to sit and laugh and drink tea whilst people like me ran around working hard, then I was going to be able to do that too!

I did not take my application seriously. I made it and that was it, it was forgotten about. I did not think that I was going to get a serious response - the application was more about me venting my anger somewhere safe rather than me wanting to better myself. I often wonder about where I would be right now if I hadn't been so angry that evening.

I had met my now-wife at that point and we were living together at her parents. She also worked as a care assistant at Castleford and even earned more money than me due to the fact that she was an NVQ 3 whilst I had only just started my level 2. As a traditionalist it did hurt my ego a bit that Kate earned more money than me, which is why I worked so many extra shifts. I don't think I told her that I had made the application, which is another indicator that I did not expect a response.

I appreciate that this might be a bit of a kick in the teeth to people who genuinely want to become nurses and have worked hard and applied for and been turned down for places in universities and, believe me, I'm sorry for this. It was late 2008 and, as far as I'm aware, when I applied there were a lot of spaces available for nurses in the universities. The year after I applied, apparently, four times as many people applied and lots were turned away. I think that the stars aligned, if you believe in things like that, and I was extremely fortunate.

Such was my lack of intent to actually follow through with my application that when I recieved invitations from both universities to attend interviews I did not bother preparing or even taking them seriously. I told Kate I was attending them and I went to my first one for Hartpury College, just outside Gloucester. I don't recall a great deal about my interview, except that I waffled a bit about Lewy-body dementia and how I found people's presentation when they had this type of dementia fascinating and I wanted to learn more. I think the phrase is "winging it". I was even worse at my second interview in Bristol, as I told them that I didn't think I could attend the university anyway because of the Severn bridge toll and had my heart set on Hartpury, if I could get in (bear in mind that I still was not taking this seriously and did not think I was going to be accepted).

Even when I recieved and accepted the position on the September 2009 intake at Hartpury College it still had not sunk in. At that time I was still scraping through my NVQ 2 with minimal effort. I did not consider finances. I did not consider what I needed to do academically. We did not even have the internet at Kate's parents at that point, so I did not even consider how I was going to do my assignments! Worse, Kate was pregnant at this point! I left everything to the last minute - even my notice at Castleford was handed in too late, which meant that shifts that I had there clashed with my attendance at university.

It only really hit me what I had done when I driving to my first day at Hartpury. All of a sudden I was wading into the unknown. I did not know what was expected of me, what I was going to do or how I was going to do it. And I suddenly felt fear and terror.