I have to say NO. My manager is concerned that I am over committing myself at work, and what’s more, over committing myself to things I shouldn’t be doing at all. She is right, and to be honest I find myself feeling a bit like a naughty child who has been found out! Of course this isn’t just about my welfare, but about her desire to give me more stuff to do. But I am paid to do a job of work, and I guess I have to pay some attention to that agenda. One of the main things I guess I haven’t been doing well, it the education plan, as she said, too much of it is in my head, and the executive team are nervous of something that isn’t visible enough. Again, naughty school girl time, as actually yes she is right. I tend to take the information from personal development plans and service plans, and formulate it in one go into a education and training plan. In fact at the end of the last financial year, I actually wrote the education plan retrospectively (this was worryingly for the auditors), and while no one by I knew this had happened, actually I know it is wrong.

So proper education planning is going to take place and to allow me time to do that, I will have to give up the infection control committee (no bad thing in my opinion) and will have to delegate more delivery of education plans to others rather than doing it myself just because I like doing it.

I guess that is the challenge between making work enjoyable and actually getting the job we are paid to do done. Having said that, I actually still enjoy that particular job and feel some how unburdened in being able to do that.

I have also been thinking about how it is that I have moved from being the young nurse who wanted to spend her career at the bedside, to the person I am today, who is unlikely to see a patient even by accident. I know that good nurses are in short supply, but it is apparent to me, that I want to remember being a good nurse, one who really cared about her patients rather than the one I would have become. A nurse who really didn’t want to do that any more. While we need nurses at the bedside, we also need nurses who understand healthcare working in areas such as mine. So this is official too, I am proud to call myself a nurse, but I am not about to go and start seeing any patients any days soon and that is how it is going to be.

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