A Justifiable Madness by AB Morgan

Author:AB Morgan
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books
Published: 2017-09-20T18:30:00+00:00

Monday had come around too quickly, and I was not in the mood for work. I had enjoyed my time off far more than was good for me and my liver was making an aching complaint that day. Emma and I had both raved on almost endlessly about Forrest Gump – what a brilliant film! I was pondering the fabulous phrase ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get’ as I walked from the lockers and on to the ward in good time for handover. As it turned out, that phrase was prophetic.

The ward seemed its usual shambolic ward-round-day self, and I was gearing up for sorting out the vast number of pharmacy orders and leave arrangements for the majority of the day, and after that I would be preparing for the next day’s ward round with Emma, as I had promised. We were both waiting in eager anticipation for her sister Laura to get in contact. Frustratingly, we had to console ourselves with leaving a message on her answerphone machine because she was away for the weekend with her husband and children. Emma’s parents had informed Emma of this fact only after we had established that no one was at Laura’s home to answer our calls. We had no choice other than to wait for Laura to call back. Meantime the rumours about Dr Sharman’s past continued amongst the patients. Most staff seemed oblivious, thank goodness, or chose to assume it was fantasy on the part of one of the patients.

I did a whirlwind tour of the ward and checked the allocations board, which outlined who was in what bed where, and by virtue of coloured magnetic labels, the board denoted what Section of the Mental Health Act, that person was on, if any. Simple, but effective.

Charlotte had drawn the short straw for managing the ward round that Monday morning, and she appeared to be deflated in her mood when she walked into handover. She used the word ‘crushed’ to describe how she felt. Nevertheless she bravely gave us the lowdown, not only on the general issues for each patient on the ward, but the outcomes from the ward round itself. She did not succeed in completing this before succumbing to tears. She explained that Dr Sharman had been in a thunderous mood, complained about his coffee, and had only agreed to keep to the discharge plan for Rodney Wells if he accepted that he had to take his medication in injectable form. Apparently, Sue, his CPN, who he had worked with for the last four years, had been present and even she had said that this was an unnecessary action. She had already purchased a pill dispenser box with the days of the week on it for him, to help Rodney remember to take his tablets.

Secretly, a lot of my ward colleagues aspired to become CPNs when they sought to move on in their nursing careers. Working as a community psychiatric nurse was stressful but it had its compensations.

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