Breaking and Mending by Joanna Cannon

Author:Joanna Cannon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2019-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Harvested

There is a running joke that you should avoid being admitted to hospital at the beginning of August, because that’s when all the new doctors arrive on the wards. In truth, it’s the very best time to be admitted, because what new doctors lack in experience they make up for in enthusiasm and compassion. They are yet to be worn down by frustration and tarnished by a broken system. They answer their bleeps immediately, they have time for everyone. They care. There are a few who think nurses are beneath them, but we have ways of putting them right on that score.

The nurse

On a bright, sunny morning in August, the machinery of the NHS turns and all the junior doctors change jobs.

Amid that change, a new harvest arrives, filled with enthusiasm. They are processed, inducted, initiated. They collect bleeps and lanyards, swipe cards and pagers, and they disappear into the wards and along the corridors, where they are swallowed up into the hospital.

I had spent the previous two weeks ‘shadowing’ my predecessor, a young woman grey with exhaustion and worn down at the edges, who tried to pass on a stream of insider tips for survival, as a parent would to a child.

‘The vending machines upstairs never work,’ she said.

‘Don’t rely on the cashpoint near the porters’ lodge, because it’s always broken.’

‘The nurses on Ward 4 are the nicest. They’ll make you a cup of tea.’

She told me which consultants were religiously early, and which consultants started a ward round ten minutes before you were due to end your shift. Which consultants you could go to with a problem, and which were best avoided.

‘Don’t go near her when she’s wearing black,’ was all she said about one.

She showed me the telephone system and the layout of the wards, how to order an X-ray and how to check blood results on the computer. Extension numbers, requests for porters, paperwork and pharmacy. What to do if you get a needle stick injury. Where the death certificate book is kept. The best parking places. The quickest route from the mortuary to the doctors’ mess. I wrote some of the things down and the rest I tried to commit to memory. Like a Labrador puppy, I trotted behind her all day and watched from the safe shelter of the periphery.

On my first day, of course, she had gone.

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