Readers of this blog (if there are any left post my period of neglect) would have noted my long absence. This is not because London has swallowed me whole and I am lost wandering the tunnels of the Underground. Nor is it because I have given up writing and all modern forms of communication, and am now blogging solely through the art of cave drawings. (Although if I was lost in the tunnels of the Underground, this would be a great way to pass the time).

(Proof I am alive and petting random wild animals)

Life has been busy. After an inexplicable pay decrease (thank you England, and the way you look after your nurses), I decided to increase my work hours to compensate. London is a greedy bitch and rent isn’t cheap, nor is flying to Vienna each fortnight, and so, given I was only clinging on financially by my fingernails, I needed to increase my income.

Luckily for me, working as an agency nurse, this option exists for me. I pick and choose the days I work, and previously I had used this to my advantage to have four-day weeks and long weekends. But it also goes the other way, and so my working weeks suddenly got a lot longer as I commenced working ten-day stretches, then heading to Vienna for four days. Technically, this is simply full-time work, ten days in a fortnight with my two weekends bunched at the end. But let me tell you, working all days back-to-back, it feels like a lot more.

Added to this is that I started a new line of work where I act as a sort-of community emergency nurse. Patients are recognised as deteriorating by their GPs and we are called in to do a full assessment and commence a plethora of interventions and tests to try and improve their worsening condition and avoid a hospital admission. This work is interesting and satisfying as you can see almost immediately the effect you have on a patient. The only downside (or upside given my desire to get some of that sweet, sweet green) is that the shifts are twelve hours long. My working week just got that little bit longer.

In the last ten-day stretch I managed to work one hundred hours. This is coupled with hour long bus rides at either end of my shift to get to and from work, and the sheer physical toll of walking through the streets of London, and I have little time or energy left for blog entry writing.

The brief time I do have left I spend with my beautiful girlfriend, recuperating under her administrations in Vienna, or trying to cram the German language into my head. Mein Deutsch wird immer besser, aber es gibt immer mehr zu lernen.

But, as stated, this does not mean I have stopped writing, which brings me to the reason for resurrecting this platform and reaching out to you, dear reader.

Just this month a reflective article of mine was published in the most recent edition of the American Journal of Nursing. It details the experience I had of verifying the death of a patient, and what actually goes into this process.

 

You can find it here and download a pdf version for free: Verification.36

Or if you’re super keen and want to part with some of your own sweet, sweet green, you can buy the whole journal here: http://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Pages/currenttoc.aspx

 

Thanks for reading, and sticking with me through the long silences and random german sentences. That is true friendship.