Tuesday 18 August 2015

One of the reasons I left nursing...

...is the many, largely unnecessary, courses nurses were suddenly  required  to go on. I think one of the things that finally finished me off was the so-called "reflective exercise". You "reflect" on a particular task, think about how it went, and then - wait for it - WRITE about it! Below is a summary of this wonderful innovation, which is, sadly, still alive and well. And downright ridiculous.


  • Identifying your feelings;
  • Evaluating the experience;
  • Analysing the experience;
  • Drawing conclusions, including alternative actions, that you could have taken;
  • Drawing up an action plan for the future.
  •  This, dear reader, is what used to be known as learning from experience. When my son B was a toddler, he put his fingers in a hot cup of tea (I know. My fault, but that's another story). He cried. Whenever I mentioned the word "hot" for the next few days, he cried again. He had learnt that tea is hot. Did he go away and think about it, and then write about it? No. Astonishingly, he didn't. He didn't need to. He had learnt. And he wasn't yet two years old. He's now a father of two himself, and he still doesn't put his fingers in hot cups of tea. Astonishing, isn't it?

    But I, at forty-something, was expected to do go away and write about things I'd been doing for years, and reflect on them. And then write about them. I had four children, an overworked husband,  a job, and was also a Relate consellor and writer. I didn't have time to faff around doing this ridiculous thing I'd been told to do.

    This has been brought to my mind because my daughter  is a practice nurse. She does a lot of cervical smears. She's been doing them for years. But - wait for it - she's now required to take a selection of these "experiences" and write about them.

    Well, she's not going to do it. Neither would I. To use an expression beloved of of my eldest son (who doesn't put his fingers in hot cups of tea, either): I'd rather have bowel surgery in the woods with a stick. Really.

    18 comments:

    1. The last time I regularly visited a hospital was when my mother in law was dying. My enduring memory is of all the nurses sitting around a large table writing. They didn't seem to have any time left for actual nursing.

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      1. There seems to be a lot of that about, Cro. Sadly.

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    2. As a NHS Speech and Language Therapist I too have to do this mind numbingly stupid stuff too, and am currently doing it for my HCPC audit. I find it insulting - when I qualified many years ago we were presumed to be intelligent & professional, now it seems we are presumed to be rather dim.

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      1. I'm so sorry you too are being subjected to this, Lindsay. And you're right. It's an insult, especially to,experienced professionals. Presumably we taxpayers are funding it, as well. Sometimes I despair.

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    3. I think it must be about 'accountability'. We have to analyse and report; maybe so we know who to blame when things go wrong. Things will always go wrong. That is human nature. Isn't it great to be retired and to say, 'sorry, no, I'm not doing that'.

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      1. Maggie, I think it has more to do with the current fashion for over training than for accountability. I wouldn't go back into the health service now, although I used to love my job.

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    4. It sounds like a case of too many chiefs to the number of Indians.

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      1. Just too much paperwork, Adrian, and no allowances for commons sense.

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    5. I think part of this is job creation. Someone is paid to think up these crackpot schemes.

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      1. I've no idea where it comes from, but I've yet to meet one person who sees the point, Keith.

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    6. How ridiculous - and they wonder why nurses are so overstretched! xx

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      1. But over stretched in all the wrong ways, Teresa! They should be allowed just to get on with the job.

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    7. It might make sense when learning something new, or possibly if the person had made mistakes, but not if the person has been doing the same thing perfectly well for years.

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    8. Excellent analysis of a non-event. Quite obvious that you learned something from the experience and even took action to avoid having to repeat it. And then you wrote about it. Well done ;-)

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    9. It's a good way of demoralising staff who just want to do a good job of being a nurse or whatever (nurses are not alone in having this problem). I often wonder how many people are prevented from joining or, more importantly, staying in such jobs because of all this nonsense.

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    10. Sadly your experience reminds me of the equally pointless evaluation exercises in the teaching profession. So glad I'm not part of it any more. Just let people get on with the jobs they're trained to do.

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