My Knowledge of the Care Sector

Firstly, I intend this only to be a preamble or preview as I will be uploading a lot more knowledge of this specific sector into its own category but suffice to say this is also my aide memoire into what I CAN relate.

In chronological order, when I came back to the work environment after my son started school, I enrolled with a staff agency who looked at my experience and  knowledge, promptly sent me to the local psychiatric hospital and  forgot about me for 5 years!  I kid you not.  I didnt become a full time employee of the National Health Service until then.  During that time I worked as Medical Secretary to the most amazing (caring) consultant psychiatrist ever.  Dr George Armitage - to my knowledge he did not write a book but if he had it would have been a best seller.  He was such a sensitive, caring man and one you just wanted to talk to.  I remember, during dictation, in my early days he was  dictating patient notes of someone with severe depression.  By that time he himself was almost blind with glaucoma but continued to work up to his planned retirement.  So, I asked what must have seemed to him the obvious question - what causes depression?  He so patiently took time to explain to me that there are 2 types - endogenous & reactive depression, and in simple terms one is reacting to an event which brings on depression and endogenous has no obvious cause.

Back then we were still treating patients with ECT - Electroconvulsive therapy - and to witness it even was horrendous and this was still the treatment for some patients with depression.  After George retired I was floated around as a relief Medical Secretary to some of the other psychiatrists but none got my heart as did George (thats another story).  I  was invited into the Unit General Managers office one day and asked if I would consider a move to the newly formed Community Nursing Department (psychiatric), the role & responsibilities seemed a bit vague other than I would working with 25 Community Nurses and as this was a new role it was  down to me to make of it what it needed - and the final irony was it was based within the ECT Department, so I saw the comings & goings, preparations of patients for ECT and  unfortunately the medical history of the patients, their life stories and why they had been recommended for ECT - some were even George's long term patients.

At this time, there were no iphones, no pagers and if I needed one of my CPN's urgently I would have to guess where they might be on their rounds if I needed them for a routine "emergency", if not I had the Ward Staff, their GP/Doctor to refer to - and believe me it did happen.  A couple of times I was the person on the end of a phone with a patient who had already taken an overdose or was close to.    A patient could take a downturn quite quickly and the first person they would seek out would be their Community Nurse because they had a close relationship with that person.  So, I became a member of that team, the CPN would trust me to do the best for "their patient" if such a need arose and I would know from experience which ones were most likely to take a downturn quickly.

After a few years there were some circumstances (again another learning curve of workplace experience that tells us its time to depart) so I took on the role of PA to the Director of Nursing of St. Giles Hospice.  Oh I could write another book about my experience there, this was where I had my taste of learning & development & started to wonder "why not me, dont I deserve development".  I learned all I ever knew about team work, the nurses all 60 of them were MY nurses, I would give my last breath for them, I would see them in great joyful moments when they knew they had done everything humanly possible to make someone's end of life as best it could be.  Its not the grief-stricken atmosphere you expect to find in a Hospice but I would often find one of my nurses secluded in their own sitting room with their thoughts and sometimes tears because they had become attached to someone they had lost.  It takes a certain kind of nurse to do this day in and day out.

After some years I moved on to a teaching role in learning & development and from there to forming my own L & D company back in 1995, one of the first contracts I managed to secure was Government funded  to get nursing homes ready for regulation and with my Investors in People qualification I could diagnose against a benchmark to see where the gaps where and what action the Home needed to be aiming for.  My contract was for 20 nursing homes in our locality and it was interesting in the fact that my own parents spent their last 5 years  in a nursing home and I could see the standard of care which had been attained in the intervening period.

Fast forward again just a few years and I had the opportunity to work with European  partners - not only writing a bid for funding 2 or 3 different projects to address what we believed needed improvement across the 27 countries.  So one of the projects was about training and my role was to write the  new competences for tourist guides to ensure that disabilities have a fair & equal access to tourism.  This  was a fascinating 3 year project and Tourist Guides internationally now can achieve this qualification.  Thats what I mean by making a  difference.

At the same time we had other projects around children with autism, blindness etc. with different countries than previously & we saw some amazing instances of best practice in other countries than the UK.  Again, I will write about this as a separate project within the Care Category.  So, stay tuned, it will come as fast as I can get it on to the Knowledge Base.  You have to keep checking back and/or following the notifications you will get when you are registered with us.

Over and out for now.

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Christine Lester, content generated 24/05/2024

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