Vikki - Paediatric Nurse

I specialised in children’s nursing from the beginning so it’s very child-focused. You learn about childhood development, childhood illness, normal development as well as the sick child. You also learn about general anatomy physiology and medication amongst a load of other stuff.

You’ll have quite a long stint in university learning the basic skills. And then from January onwards you alternate between placement and university for the rest of the 3 years. Everything is really well supervised and as you go through the 3 years, you gain a bit more responsibility. The placements are great because we get to put into practice what we’ve learnt. No two days tend to be the same, it depends on where you are on placement, especially with children’s there are very different areas.

Generally on the ward in an acute setting you come in and do handovers in the mornings. You’ll sit in on the general hand-over and then get a hand-over from the nurses who are looking after the specific patient you’re going to take over. With children’s nursing, you can get patients in with a wide variety of illnesses or different conditions so it does vary quite a bit from child to child. We do nightshifts too, which I think if you’ve not done them before, gets you very well prepared for shift work.

I think the most enjoyable thing about the course so far has been interacting with the children and seeing you’re making a difference to their lives - that’s the best bit for me.

We caught up with Vikki to ask her some questions about her course and her plans for the future.

What excites you the most about your course?

Certainly in the beginning and throughout the first year the excitement is when you first get on the course and you’re off to university – that’s a big step, no matter where you are in your life. Then you get a few months in and it’s the excitement of going out on your first placement. I think each step along the way there’s different areas to get excited about. I’m going into the second year, so there’s a bit more expectation and there’s a lot more you can do. There’s little bits along the way that keep you excited and I think the general day to day on placement is what keeps me going – that’s what the job’s going to be at the end of the day.

Do you have to apply for jobs at the end of your course?

We don’t need to apply for jobs: if we have been signed off we automatically will be offered a job. That’s great: it means we haven’t got to do maths and English testing again; however, there may be competition in some areas so that may mean an informal interview. A lot of hospitals will do preceptorships or rotations, so that might be where you go in for a year or two and pick three or four areas, you want to work in. They’ll support you through your newly qualified first year and offer extra training.

What's your proudest moment so far?

Making a difference in a child’s day, seeing that difference, helping them through that journey from being in hospital to eventually leaving is what makes me proud to do the job. I think on the university side of it, my proudest moment was getting onto a national student leadership programme, which I’ve done in conjunction with my degree, which was quite sought after.

What is the student leadership programme?

It is run by the Council of Deans and The Burdett Trust, and they set out to enrol 150 students nationally from pre-reg health care courses. It aims to develop leadership skills and qualities in students in health care but from the pre-reg stage. Then when they qualify and go into practice, they have already started to gain the leadership skills that are needed within health care. I was very privileged to get a place and it’s been very beneficial for my journey.

What advice would you give to anyone thinking of going into Nursing?

I would definitely tell them to go for it. It’s a brilliant career and it is very rewarding no matter what field of nursing you study in – it opens so many doors. You can get jobs up and down the country or you can go abroad. I think no matter what you do in nursing, it is such a rewarding career.

Image credit to K Bursa