I said I was going to keep this blog to practice my writing and to help redress the balance as I can't seem to find any radiographer blogs, just loads of EMT and paramedic ones.

So, term started and I didn't write anything but now, now placement starts for the first time tomorrow (not quite the first time fo me but let's not talk about that shall we). I'm off to the large general hospital in the north of the city, with it's enormous en suite PFI building site, I shall be interested to see the differences in an urban department contrasted to the small town sites I've seen before.

I'm currently writing an assignment on a patient journey for a fractured neck of femur and came across this post which I may have to work into one of the later sections. As a rad student I only get the patient after this (in some cases long after this) when they're either delirious with pain or practically knocked out with medication depending upon the A+E department. There are a couple who stick in the mind, one lady who'd been walking around for a few days and only came in on the insistence of her carer who noticed her having more trouble than usual getting out of her chair and one who came in in the back of an ambulance and couldn't move at all to help us so was sent back to A+E twice for more pain medication. I shall leave you to guess who had the more severe fracture.

Waiting on the NHS

I'm still waiting to hear from the local NHS about my funding. If I don't get it then there's no need to stay here, I can go home to annoy my family, with my tail between my legs.

I appreciate that the national health service has better things to spend it's money on than paying for me to retake something which I messed up entirely myself without any extenuating circumstances. But as one of the links I was with last year said, I am "a good radiographer but a terrible student" and the NHS isn't paying for a student their paying for a student radiographer. Although I'm not so good at jumping through the student-y hoops I am deeply encouraged that I can do this by being asked last year why I was on placement with the first years.

I shall leave this here as a first post, which I'm sure no one will actually read, but is at least a start in helping me to set out my thoughts on screen and improve my written work and my 'reflective accounts.'