On a cold night in a 300 year old hospital in London on a 22-bed 'nightingale' style medical 'back' ward as a newly qualified RN, first night duty, new ward, 1975......................
Late on night when all were asleep,
(At least that's what I thought.)
A sound of water, perhaps a leak?
An answer must be sought.
The ward was still, no other sound
Or movement could I see.
But it was there, still to be found.
Whatever could it be?
I switched on my torch and kept it low
So not to wake the sick.
Past their beds in torches glow,
A thourough search but quick.
Then there it was, loud as before,
There's water running free.
It's somewhere near I must explore.
It begins to worry me.
You know the feel when a floor is wet
And your shoes they start to slide.
You compensate but loose your bet,
And involuntarily you glide!
Contact came with chairs and stands
As I hit the floor.
Now on wet bottom and my hands
I slid towards the door.
With no nurses to see my plight
I jumped up from my fall.
Sending some trolleys into the night,
I crashed into a wall.
As I stood quiet against that wall,
That sound I heard again.
Besides feeling like a fool,
My bottom was in pain.
Then I saw it in the torches glow,
Beside the very end bed.
A trickle of fluid begining to show.
I stared at it in dread.
The scource of the flow that fluid free,
Now painfully I saw.
A pan-less commode allowed the pee
To run accross the floor!
The lights came on, the room was bright,
The Sister had walked in!
Shocked by the noise at dead of night
I'd done a deadly sin.
She walked me round, we checked the ward,
The beds, commodes and pans.
She lectured me. "We can't afford,
Wet floors and dirty hands!"
She left me then the mess to clean
And gave a sort of grin.
I knew then she was not mean,
I was where once she'd bin!
The moral is, commodes check all.
Don't assume they've pans.
You'll never end up like fool,
with wet floors and dirty hands!
Poem from the book "A Nurses Progress"
by Chris Cyr-Webster RN
(I can still remember sitting in the cold urine to this day!)
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