Part time nursing

It's 6 30 am on a rainy Sunday morning in November. I should be in bed fast asleep, having rolled in just a few hours earlier from a Saturday night out in the student union. So why am I on a bus preparing myself for an eight hour shift in the orthopaedic wards at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee? I'm not on an orthopaedic placement; in fact this trip to the hospital has nothing to do with my medical course.

Like many students I have discovered that to afford shopping trips and nights out I need a job to supplement my income. I work as a nursing auxiliary. An auxiliary is a grade A nurse, at the bottom of the ward hierarchy. We help nursing staff to care for patients, and we can gain further qualifications to become healthcare assistants, who are trained for basic nursing duties, such as measurement of blood sugar.

As an auxiliary nurse you can choose to fit work around coursework and placements. At first this was just a convenient way of earning money. But after a few weeks of regular shifts I discovered that it is a great way to learn, practise, and perfect the so called soft skills that form the foundation of clinical practice once you graduate (box).

The term “soft skills” has no agreed definition, but, simply, they are the personal qualities that influence the way that we interact with others and deal with dilemmas in life. In the context of medicine soft skills refer broadly to communication skills; the ability to deal with difficult individuals and circumstances; ethics and professionalism; and working in the healthcare team.1