gallacher2001

I wear croc's, like everyone else I have tried god knows how many different shoes and croc's I find are best for my back and my feet! The unfortunate thing about them is that they will be banned in our theatres as of August, apparently....and I am dubious, but in sweeden they have been found to give off static that has interfered with cardiac monitors!!! Personally I say...what a load of rubbish! But we had a memo just yesterday telling us that we were not allowed to wear croc's after August 1st!! I am devastated! I love my croc's!!!

We operate in a department that has 16 elective theatres and 2 dedicated emergency theatres and one trauma orthapedic theatre, so I have to say that fortunately we have never had to reverse an anaesthetic to do an emergency, cancelled lists before and bumped patients from lists but never reversed!

I work in Scotland in anaesthesia and scrub in a busy theatre dept. I am also on-call on a 1:2 basis for organ retrieval. My experience of the whole journey thankfully is not one that involves greedy, squabbling surgeons! All cases that I have been involved in have taken place in the middle of the night, it's just the nature of the beast, theatres are available at these hours. Overall I feel quite privileged to be one of only 2 nurses at our hospital to provide care for the donors and their families. I don't so much find the experience solemn as I do respectful, I personally feel an immense amount of respect for the patient and their families, the cold hard truth of it is that unfortunately that person has died/is dying and nothing can change that, it has happened and is an inevitable part of life by the time you become involved, what I find is that by agreeing to donate their organs so that others may have a chance at life or a substantially improved one is in a way the ultimate un-selfish sacrifice and something I hold the patient in great revere for. We have 2 specialist teams fly in to actually carryout the surgery, they bring with them their own scrub nurse, my duty is to work in anaesthetics and circulating and perhaps most importantly conduct the last offices. I am always alone bar the company of the renal co-coordinator when conducting last offices, just the patient, the co-coordinator and me. I feel quite honored to be able to be so attentive and take as long as is necessary to provide the patient with the optimum level of care. From the anaesthetics point of view their is an immense amount for us to do, it's an aneathestic just like any other, no different, IV fluids, catheter, body warmers, everything as it would be in a "normal" case, we always provide opiates also, there are many anaesthetists who question the giving of analgesia to "doners" on the ground that they simply don't feel anything, but thankfully my colleagues and I both feel that it is very worthwhile and provides peace of mind of a comfortable passing. For me as others have mentioned, perhaps the most alien of all moments is when the ventilator and monitors are switched off, because it's what we are used too, because it's an integral part of what we as theatre nurses do, having no life signs, no noise is indeed a little un-nerving particularly the first time you experience it. This for me though is perhaps the only negative or somewhat distressing factor in the process. To address the initial question as to whether or not depression is a factor, for me I would have to say that it is not. Yes, dealing with children is indeed very very difficult, that's about the only time I will feel affected by the process negatively, but that is of course only human. It is immensely satisfying to receive that letter from the co-coordinator detailing the eventual recipients of the donated organs, sometimes it can be many 6 or 7 people, I find that even if I have been a little down about the case, that letter makes it all worth while and in some ways brings a smile thinking that one patient helped so many others and I was fortunate enough to be a part of that! :)

Forgot to mention that as a theatre nurse undertaking both scrub and anaesthetics we have been banded in band 5 Ds&Es with our Fs in band 6.... What band as an E are you in?...Just be interested to see the scale of descrepency between regions on this "Nationally agreed pay system" !

Firstly a quick hello! I am a RGN currently working in a large Scottish hospital in the main theatre department in both anaesthetics and scrub. I've been in employment with the NHS since the AFC was first introduced back in Oct 2004, unfortunately my trust was one of the last to change over to AFC with the majority of nurses in my hospital changing over in January of this year. Due to management errors I was informed I was an administration error!!! and had been missed out of the AFC process, despite numerous submissions of a total of 3 job descriptions, 2 at D grade and my more recent at E grade! As a result I was informed by the job matching panel that there was an 18 month backlog of nursing and healthcare staff to clear and since we don't receive any back dated money till 6 months after the date of your assimilation I am in-line not to receive any back money till early 2009!!!! Is there anyone else out there possibly from one of the slower implementation sites in the same boat? I now have absolutely no idea what to expect back pay wise and I was wondering if those who have been assimilated could answer a few questions for me... *Did your back pay included deductions for Super-an and student loans? *If you worked Sat/Sun/Nights before you were assimilated did they deduct anything from the final sum received for this overtime? * Roughly how much money without prying do you think I am likely to receive based on what you got for back pay? I appreciate all and any help/comments, many thanks in advance! Frances.