Just a bit of musing really. Qualified in 1993 and to paraphrase an old saying, the past is a different country, they did things differently then.
I recall how as a second year adult nursing student on a paeds ward I was plonked on my first day in the ‘baby’ room and expected to feed a baby and change its nappy. 8 of them one after the other. I literally started at one end and worked my way around. Never held a baby in my life, let alone fed one, didn’t know about winding etc. At the end of the shift my ears would be ringing. Asked an ‘auxiliary’ as they were called then to show me how to do it properly.
Also spent several months on a psychiatric ward which was eye opening. Most of it was engaged in preventing sectioned patients from leaving the ward by sitting at the door. Taking patients out for a smoke. Watching depot injections being given. Very little opportunity to see what psychiatric nursing was about. Do remember thinking it seemed quite physically risky.
Being left to look after 6 patients alone with very little support from qualified staff although we had a lot more interaction with third years in those days who were the font of all knowledge. Basically learning on the job much of the time.
Remember a book being published about how everything we did should be grounded in evidence based research. Can’t remember the name but in many respects it questioned everything we did as nurses from pressure area care to taking temperatures. At that point we put anti biotic powder willy nilly on pressure ulcers.
I guess I feel quite sentimental at the moment. A close friends daughter who I remember as a baby has just started her 3rd year RN training, ironically I’ve just started flexi retirement. I’m amazed at how different her experience is in some respects, you could say anodyne and a bit bland, less hands on, more ‘professional’.