Day in a life of a nursing student

On  a ¨normal¨ day, my alarm goes off at 5.15 a.m. Then I try to get out of bed, put my clothes on and make myself ready for the day. around 5.30 I eat my breakfast and make some food to take with me. I pack all my stuff I need for the day and around 6.15 I leave home to take the bus to my practice place.

At the hospital I change my clothes and put on my uniform. I had never worn a uniform before, so it was a bit strange, but it also felt good.

Morning shifts here start at 7 a.m and then they start with giving rapport about the patients, they do a round to check all the patients and then share the medicines. So after that it's around 8 o'clock, so that means coffeebreak and for some also breakfast. The first time they did a coffeebreak and so early, I was suprised. We only ¨worked¨ for one hour and we already had a break. Well that is just a cultural thing here, coffee is really important and they drink it all the time.

After the coffeebreak it is time for the morning washes, and for some patients time to get out of bed for a while. Till 11 o'clock there is not much to do, we're just waiting for someone who rings the bell. Besides that for me it's just sitting around waiting for the lunch. So we serve the lunch around 11 o'clock and then we go have lunch ourselves.

After lunch we're again waiting till someone needs our help, so sometimes when you don't have so many patients, it can be a little bit boring, cause you have nothing to do. At 2.30 the evening shift comes in, and we give rapport to them. Then you finnish the last things you have to do and 3 p.m the morning shift is done, and I can go home.

For me as a foreign student it is quite hard to communicate with people, cause there is a language barrier. I thought most of the people here could speak english, but I was wrong. So that makes it really hard for me to understand the patients and to take care of them, because you aren't able to explain what you're gonna do. So most of the time I'm just observing and asking what the other nurses do. Although I can't do a lot of things, it is a great experience to see how it's organised here in the hospital and I learn a lot from it.

Puhua myöhemmin

Emma