Any Nurses who trained in 1989 or before......I have a question for you..

[recall]

When you washed/helped to wash someone, did you wear gloves ?

I just happened to get some poo on my hand ( don't ask ) and I washed it off, but I couldn't get rid of the smell. I said to my friend "This takes me back, we used to use washing powder to get rid of the smell, Melena was the worse " She looked at me horrified. Was it just me should I have been wearing gloves ????? I remember wearing them when I was being assessed administering an enema, so I think we used to wear them for procedures, and blood stuff, but not for poo or sick etc.

Please put my mind at rest, I feel all wrong now

same year as me Islaman

I had to get to bed last night but glad to see the memories continuing....I remember all this....wheeling O2 and air cylinders to the required bed, packing wounds, tea on a tray for consultants rounds.
I remember the lovely domestics (we had our own, they had pride in the ward, 2 in the day, 1 in the evening) and they would sneak you a leftover dinner or a milky coffee. Had to sneak it though, matron would make your life hell if she discovered you eating patients food, even if all patients had been fed and it was destined for the bin.

I trained in London 1987 - 1990.

Oh nurses capes were fab, so so cosy. What a shame they have gone by the wayside.

And ye Gods if you went off and did your shopping still in uniform - all hell to pay for that! Now I see it all the time.

Tea for the consultants, packing wounds and the correct aseptic way to do all dressings.

I also remember turning up on duty with another student nurse after a rather ....ahem .... heavy night on the tiles. The very senior and strict ward sister (who I was terrified of) spotted immediately that neither of us were, shall we say "entirely fit for work". She sent us both to the office and I remember being petrified that I was going to be reported, thrown out. Five mins later she turned up with two bowls of NHS porridge which we were ordered to eat and then sent us home with strict instructions NEVER to turn up on duty like that ever again.....and she actually had a twinkle in her eye! I respected her no end after that, she was a fantastic nurse too.

My very first ward as a student was urology and we had to do meatus rounds...can still see the faces of the chaps all waiting their turn

Trained in London 1984. On one ward when i was a student we had to stand for report time. Were not allowed to write anything down. Then when report was over we used to stand with patients while the ward sister said prayers.

Do you remember the excitement when granuflex was invented?
I loathed the breakfast trolly. Each and every person was asked the same question. Cornflakes, weetabix, rice crispies or porridge. Do you want hot milk or cold milk on it, tea or coffee, toast, egg, orange juice.
Next patient. What would you like for breakfast? it's when they asked what you had when they'd been in hospital for three weeks and heard you ask next door 30 seconds before.

kreecher God yes the Holy Grail that was Granuflex.

We had an overenthusiastic rep came & brought us all lunch & gave us a long & boring a very interesting talk. We put up with it for the M&S sandwiches and took bets on how long before he realised we had absolutely no influence on the purchasing of his new product!!

The bloody breakfast trolley was a sore point with many of us. One day I was obviously getting irritated as my next gent said "I'll have tea, 2 sugars,cornflakes cold milk & toast & jam please" all in one breath. I got allth at gang of men trained up & they passed on the info to the new patients how to keep SN Bossy happy.

i trained 88-91

maslows hierarchy of needs...

rubbing talc into bums on the "backs round"

orange rubber tubing.....

honely tulle dressings.....and my favorite stuff-silastic foam! this was used to fill the holes of bedsores and i once managed to get my gloves stuck in a dressing (it was a bit like that foam stuff you can get to fill gaps in your home).

i remember shaving a lady ready for theatre and when the lady came back from theatre the surgeon sent a note to me saying he would like to be the one who made the first incision!

as a first year student on nights it was common to only be on duty with a third year student....the night sister would fuck off to feed the babies in paeds. i remember we put up a bag of blood and i managed to spike the bag with the giving set.....blood goes a long way!

OMG I had forgotten Silastic foam. It was about £25 a pop as I remember - and that was back in 1986!

I was desperately trying to remember Silastic foam...thank you!
What were your uniforms like? We wore purple and while striped dresses with fitted bodices, full skirts and puffed sleeves. Linen starched aprons. Linen hats that looked like frilly pork pies. American tan tights and brown duty shoes. I still have one set of uniform packed away somewhere as when the uniform changed to the national one, we got to keep them.

my first day as a student nurse was spent learning how to make my hat, what underwear to wear/not to wear.

we had a consultant who would do his ward round and all staff had to hide and be silent except for sister. we would hide in the sluice and the linen cupboard. one day i was in the sluice and i leant on the button of the clinematic....

he and sister were very cross and i was made to clean all the bedpans....

when i did my obstetric rotation i managed to flood the bathroom closest to the nurses station where sister was sat.....the water surrounded her chair-with her sat on it.

its a wonder i ever qualified...

my last job in the NHS...... consultant nurse in pharmacy......poacher turned gamekeeper!

magic eye...no more drip counting....

this is a blast from the past thread.....getting all nostalgic now....pass me a bedpan

I trained 1990, and we had lessons in practising the "Australian" lift to move patients which was the big thing at the time - spent hours humping each other up and down the bed. Also how to do hospital corners properly with the bed sheets.
Remember when hospitals provided changing rooms and laundered your uniform for you (do they still do that??). We also scrubbed the bathrooms on a weekend.

Sadly we only had the national uniform. The cape with red straps was brilliant. I still have my silver belt buckle with a bluebell motif. It still has the petersham belt, to remind me how much slimmer I was when I qualified! Had to stop wearing it when I started in Neonates.

I started nursing school in 1989, in Canada, and we weren't told to use gloves when washing people. By the time I graduated gloves were starting to be used much more often.

A bit later but I trained in 93-96, but in the military so all very regimented! <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=qarnns+uniform&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=661&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=x6QYotj-uaS_XM:&imgrefurl=flickrhivemind.net/Tags/qarnns/Interesting&docid=PZNg_wzYSQgZvM&imgurl=farm2.static.flickr.com/1175/893181955_f79bd7f307.jpg&w=146&h=500&ei=gZ0tT7TgCsfa8APjt9CdDw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=578&sig=104337946798943489607&page=1&tbnh=164&tbnw=48&start=0&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:0&tx=27&ty=107" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I wore this which was ace for taking blood results over the phone as we could write the values on the back of our starched aprons.

We had rounds of the ward each morning, and all the bed wheels had to be lined up, anyone fit enough had to get out of bed into a chair (servicemen and civilians!) and their beds made immaculate. They were only allowed a water jug and a glass on top of their locker, everything else had to be inside it. Nothing on the floor or under the bed and all curtains pulled back neatly.

We had ward dometics who did the cleaning and the meal and drinks trolleys (we helped of course) and they were allocated a ward so were very territorial and proud; the wards were immaculate.

We had rounds constantly - drugs rounds, obs rounds, catheter rounds, fluid balance rounds, ward rounds with the doctors.

Wound care was great - we used hydrogen peroxide for cleaning cavities and packed them with foam or ribbon gauze with betadine! We all got very excited when we got Kaltostat but one consultant wouldn't let us use it as he said "I'm not having you put seaweed in my patients" I now work in primary care and we use Sorbsan or Aquacel ribbon for packing.

I don't remember using gloves and aprons much at all, especially not for washing patients. We wore them for everything in isolation though, as we had all the c.diff patients as well as MRSA and tropical diseases.

Oh and I used to keep a tongue depressor with the drip rates on it in my top pocket - we were so happy when we got oximetric (sp?) pumps for infusions!

You lot need to form a commitee and get to whichever clown is in charge of nursing these days. This thread is dynamite.

Just read back a bit - oh my goodness our student uniforms!!! What a laugh!! Guaranteed to make the most attractive girl look like an ugly toddler. White dress with navy blue piping. Peter Pan collar. Very widely cut dress. Thingy in the front that ribbons attached to, so the dress could be tied at the waist, or in the case of some, around the ribcage a la terribly unflattering not-quite-empire waist style. Nearly see-through material if you sweated at all - given that it was polyester, this was inevitable. Made even hotter, therefore, by mandatory full-length slip underneath. Big initial of our university embroidered over left boob pocker.
No wonder no-one took us seriously. "Oh look, it's today's batch of students ".

This is a fascinating thread, I am loving it. It's living history - AlOuisee is right too.

pockeT

no idea what a "pocker" is

The hospital uniform I trained in was designed by Norman hartnell the queens clothes designer. You had to pin the collar and buttons on and i had a pearl collar button. Collars and aprons all starched the aprons could stand up on their own. When I became a ward sister my hat had detachable tails and dress had sleeves that you had to put on for special occasions. I'm old school did locker rounds and was taught how to represent the patient on ward rounds. Hate visiting friends in hospital think it such a shame that nurses don't seem to nurse anymore.

we all wore white uniforms...our year was shown as stripes on our hats. the male students wore white trousers and a white jacket top. one poor lad had got dressed in the dark and had put on the underpants his wife had got him for valentines day......lovely red love hearts all over.

you could see them through his trousers........poor bastard!