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    Losing the Music
    Losing the Music
    Losing the Music
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    Losing the Music

    By Anna Treloar

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Two new nurses start their first jobs at a country hospital. But they know nothing about the changes that are on the way, and these changes affect both their lives in ways which they could never have foreseen.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJul 24, 2017
    ISBN9781543907940
    Losing the Music

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      Book preview

      Losing the Music - Anna Treloar

      One

      Morning Shift – Spring

      Grace was running late. The transition from the peace and safety of home to the unpredictability of her nursing work in the medical ward of a rural hospital was always difficult. She usually delayed leaving until just after she should have left. She filled the car with music to prolong the feeling of being at home. Today it was some of Bach’s organ music. Even the new green leaves on the jacaranda trees that lined the road to the hospital did not alter her mood. In summer, they would drop their purple blossoms and carpet the street. The river ran alongside the road, and she could glimpse it occasionally across the backyards of houses as she drove past.

      Handover would begin in one minute. She nosed into a parking spot and ran up the stairs, arriving just in time. Tall, strong, slim, with a permanent look of worry which belied her experience and competence, she wore regulation navy-blue scrubs.

      As she found a chair, somebody asked, Where’s Dynna? Just at that moment, Dynna the Enrolled Nurse, appeared from the lift at the top end of the ward, cheerful, two buttons on her non-uniform blouse undone, and clearly not much on underneath it. Her dazzling blonde hair was done up in a neat bun. The four male cardiac patients in the end bay closest to the lift had been looking rather glum at the start of another day in hospital but immediately brightened and began to think that there could be some good things about hospital after all.

      The night nurse was anxious to get home and send her children to school. She hurried through the handover.

      Bed 1 – slept; Bed 2 – slept; Bed 3 – passed 1500 ml of urine overnight, don’t know why; Bed 4 – doesn’t look too crash-hot this morning; Bed 5 – new admission, needs meds charted properly, there’s some path ordered I think, didn’t get much rest last night; Bed 6 – yes, she’s back again, apparently the son who was meant to look after her at home got a job interstate and wasn’t there after all… The handover, such as it was, proceeded with nothing more noted for most patients than Slept all night. Only the printed patient list with bed numbers and diagnoses helped Grace and the rest of the nursing team to follow this abbreviated report.

      It was an old hospital, and Medical Ward occupied the top floor. There was a central corridor with a series of four-bed bays, two-bed rooms and a few single rooms opening off this corridor. The bathrooms, utility room and treatment room were on the left, faced by the main nurses’ station on the right. A smaller nurses’ station was at the bottom end of the ward.

      Grace saw that she had been allocated patients in the bottom end of the ward with an experienced Endorsed Enrolled Nurse called Lena as offsider. Grace would manage all the medications; Lena would cover all the observations needed; and they would share bed-making, showering, feeding, charting, positioning, and providing comfort and support as needed. They would work as a team, they would ensure each had breaks, and they would share a laugh if they could. It would be a good shift—though shifts rarely ran as hoped or planned, this being the nature of nursing work. Grace always found the intense mix of people, relationships, and stories which made up a shift in Medical Ward produced a heady atmosphere, one which was endlessly absorbing, and to some degree, sustaining as well.

      At the other end of the ward, Dynna had turned the television in the bay where she was working on to a programme which played the latest hit songs. It seemed incongruous to Grace to have older patients breakfasting to the sound of hip-hop. Perhaps it cheered them up. Perhaps they could not actually follow all the words which tended to be aggressive or obscene or often both. Perhaps they just enjoyed seeing Dynna practising the latest dance moves as she sat the cardiac patients up in bed and gave their hair a quick comb before doctors’ rounds.

      A patient buzzer sounded. Grace hurried to answer it.

      Give me my teeth, said a ninety-year-old. I feel like biting somebody.

      In the next bed, an eighty-year-old asked plaintively of Grace, Are you the one I’m frightened of?

      Nobody’s frightened of me, Grace assured her, pouring out a cup of tea for her and adding generous amounts of sugar.

      Pan please, nurse demanded a third patient. Grace reminded her she was already sitting on one.

      The fourth patient, a retired Nurse Educator, smiled quietly. Some things never changed in nursing. She hoped that tertiary education would not drive the nursing virtues which she had taught for so long out of the profession. Grace gave her a quick smile as Lena came in to help with getting people out of bed and into the shower.

      It was Monday morning, which meant doctors’ rounds were at 8 am, followed by a visit from the Director of Nursing and then the first orientation day of the two new graduate nurses who had recently been employed. All that would cause disruption to the ward routine, and there was so much to get done. Sometimes, Grace thought the art of good nursing was being able to prioritise, and with that, to decide what could safely be omitted from care. But that didn’t factor in the time it took to reassure, explain, comfort and simply be with lonely or anxious patients. Somehow, those actions never found their way into the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which the Hospital Manager (known unofficially to staff as The Fat Controller) used to guide all decisions. He favoured those task-oriented nurses who rushed through the physical and technical work. He disapproved of nurses who wanted to practise what the undergraduate nursing students earnestly called patient-centred care. That wasted time and nursing hours and eroded his budget. He had a background in Recovery and he liked his patients semi-conscious and grateful.

      There was a crash from the other end of the ward. Dynna had knocked over a bedside table while performing a particularly complicated dance move. At that moment, the Scottish physician arrived. Viewing the situation with an ironic smile, he elected to begin his rounds at Grace’s end of the ward.

      With his entourage of admiring medical students following at a respectful distance, the physician strode down the ward at 8 am sharp. Pausing briefly at the nurses’ station, he said to Grace, You can expect a new patient later this morning.

      Yes, doctor. What’s his name? Grace asked politely.

      Looking round to make sure every student was listening, the doctor replied, Mbosa Ritchie.

      Puzzled, Grace asked him to repeat the name. He did so, with an even broader Scottish accent. Grace did her best to repeat the name, being encouraged by the physician to have several attempts. By now, most of the medical students were laughing, and finally Grace realised she was the butt of a joke. She laughed too, and the round began.

      Just after the doctors had moved off, the Director of Nursing appeared in her trademark red shoes with five-centimetre heels. The sound of these on the hard linoleum floors served as a useful warning to nurses that she was on her way. Beds were straightened, bedpans were removed, wet towels were hastily picked up and thrown into the linen trolleys, and all nurses made sure they were hovering close to their allocated patients, busily reading the progress notes or studying the observation charts.

      Morning all, she barked as she marched down the ward. She disappeared into the Nursing Unit Manager’s office and closed the door. Jonathon, the Nursing Unit Manager of Medical Ward, had not expected such an early visit.

      Wonder why she’s gone in there, Lena said to Grace as they made a bed together. She doesn’t usually meet Jonathon up here. What’s going on?

      Pay rise for nurses? joked Grace.

      You girls are wonderful; you should all get more money, said the patient whose bed they were making. Want a lolly?

      Grace and Lena both refused this offer as they had found several of the valued lollies among the bedclothes earlier.

      Do you want to go to first morning tea? Grace asked Lena.

      No, you take it, Lena replied generously. I had a big breakfast—had to get up early to cook for my husband. Then I had to drop the cat off at the vet’s on the way to work.

      Lena’s cat Bourdieu (always addressed as Purrdy by those who could not remember his real name) was a feature of ward life. He celebrated his birthday, Easter and Christmas, and various other significant events in Medical Ward life by sending hampers of treats in for the staff to enjoy in busy times. He had been officially appointed as Patron of Medical, and a framed photograph of him posing in his kitchen windowsill hung in the smaller nurses’ station at the bottom end of the ward.

      Gratefully, Grace left the ward. Nothing was more delicious than a toastie from the hospital kitchen, a savoury delicacy consisting of a large slice of white bread, heaped with cheese, onion rings, tomato, pineapple and whatever else had taken the creative fancy of the chef that day and then grilled. It was guaranteed to get any nurse through until lunchtime and beyond.

      In the staff canteen, the four new graduates were relishing a break from their busy

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