The final stretch.

I was warned from the beginning that my training would fly by but seriously, where has the time gone? Third year has had that strange quality of going quickly and seemingly taking forever. I can’t decide if it feels like my placements this year were just yesterday or years ago.

This week is my last week of theory at uni before I start my final placement (which some places call “management” but ours is supervised practice). Our cohort were the first to be able to request a specific service or clinical area. Previously this hadn’t been allowed because of the difficulties in allocating fairly but I think it’s important that you get something that interests you at such a critical time in your training. I requested CAMHS and was allocated a place I went to in my second year, which I was so happy about. However in our trust CAMHS is currently undergoing a huge restructure and so there’s no sign off mentors available. I was absolutely gutted but luckily one of my tutors was brilliant and organised my new placement within a day. So I’ll be spending three months at an early intervention in psychosis (EIIP) team. I’m excited because it’s a new area for me and I’ve heard really good things about the placement.

For the past few months my life has been taken up completely by my dissertation. I am really enjoying working on it but it’s still a huge source of stress. I have always left my deadlines to the last minute as I work better under pressure, but I have been making a real effort with this. However it has seemed to be one thing after the other recently and I am a lot more behind than I should be. I am trying not to panic too much, but as the deadline draws ever closer it’s hard not too.

I am not doing to well on the blogging front, my goal was once a week. But I’m sure all student nurses experience the same difficulties with prioritising!