Sunday 27 March 2011

An Evening of Comic Song

Friday 25th March 19:30

Another fabulous SingSoc social, this time to see Pete Taylor, Jon Openshaw and Robert Webb in an Evening of Comic Song at the Lantern Theatre. I had a good idea of which songs they would sing tonight and essentially I was right. The songs were from various productions such as Avenue Q, Victoria Wood, Monty Python etc. What I wasn't expecting was the way the songs were arranged into a story of their lives (loosely based on truth). It was particularly funny when one of the trio made a mistake/ forgot a line. The natural friendships they have was obvious and relaxed therefore making each blunder funny and almost essential. The general theme was smutt, which was not to the taste of some of the audience. A couple of which did not stay until the end- all I can say is that they were warned! An excellent night..more from this trio me thinks!

26th March 2011: The March for the Alternative!

After catching an early train home to london, I spent the whole of yesterday at the massive protest in London. With too many friends in different organisations I decided to march with my parents. Dad manning the 'one million climate jobs' (http://www.climate-change-jobs.org/) stall and mum aiding me in my search for my brother and his girlfriend. Eventually we found them after watching miles of protesters go by from all over the country and from every backwater little village! it was clear that this protest was a genuine reaction to the public funding cuts. Peoples' lives were being effected in a million different ways.

My mum was adament that I should have worn my uniform for the demo but I was aware that Hallam would have pretty good grounds to kick me off the course. It does seem ironic though that I could not wear a nursing uniform at a protest against public funding.
Mum took off home after it got too cold but I remained with my brother. Following Twitter reports, like the majority of the remaining protesters it seemed, we headed to oxford circus where Topshop in particular was under attack for tax dodging. When we got there Topshop had been forced to close which, considering it was a busy saturday afternoon, meant it lost alot of business.
At the centre of oxford circus, flares were being set off and a large paper horse had been set fire to. It filled the cross roads with smoke which added to the orange and pink flares. The sight of the burning horse was amazing but it was such a sign of the times that everybody, including passing tourists, had there arms up taking pictures of the flames. The whole atmosphere was great; oxford street had been shut down on an overcast saturday in London.
Following more reports, we walked down to piccadilly where Fortnum and Mason was in the process of being occupied. As we got there several protesters were climbing up to the roof above the doorway. They had covered the building with slogans. There was such as party atmosphere around the shop with several people carrying loadspeakers. Dancing in picadilly watching people break into the shops felt like we were a group that could really make a change. Unfortuately, the atmosphere got to one girl who collapsed near me. I managed to push into the circle surrounding her to revive her from her unconsciousness before a qualified nurse got there, followed by the police. The police officer came into the group and basically ordered us to get away from her if we did not have medical training. Both I and the qualified nurse handed over the situation. At this point he looked sheepish and left us to it. Its no surprice that protesters get angry when the police come into situations like a bull in a china shop without knowing where they stand! Thankfully the girl was fine but wanted to see a paramedic anyway. 
Shortly afterwards we heard reports that the police were kettling from one side. We started to move towards piccadilly circus. A couple of minutes later a man shouted 'kettling'. We ran just intime for the police line up behind us and trap the protesters in.  Reports say they were there for hours..


Friday 11 March 2011

End of Community Placement

So yesterday was the last day of my community placement. I didn't really know what to expect from community- the general consensus was that it was easy and there was a lot of sitting around drinking tea! 


In some aspects that was true,but I felt like it was far more than that. We went on visits in the morning which consisted of a wide variety of  tasks. Many patients had some form of leg ulcer which needed to be redressed regularly. I never knew there were so many different varieties of dressings and bandages! Many patients had cancer so the nurses visited then for support and to encourage them to visit the day hospice. These were the hardest patients for me as I didn't really know what to say to them- especially as many of them can hardly understand my accent. To me it sounds like I'm mimicking them if I try to go more 'Yorkshire'.


The one thing that I was picked up on during this placement is that my medical/biological knowledge is great but I need to concentrate on the social elements more. On the 12 Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Almost seems ironic that this blog is called the conversion to social science when apparently I haven't converted yet! To be fair, as soon as it was picked up I concentrated on the ADLs to a greater extent than I ever had before, which, thankfully, seemed to impress my mentor.


This placement has really helped me increase my vocabulary related to wounds extensively. Before I would simply say 'they have a pressure sore on their leg'. Now I can describe the stage at which it is and what the tissue is like- ie sloughy, epithialising, granulating, eschar etc. Hopefully I can get a chance to impress my new mentor when I start my next placement.


So Monday I'm off to a new placement on a care of the elderly ward. I know my way around wards, they have essentially all been the same up to now. But lets see how it goes...